Revenge
by Miashara
Summary: Another narrative from Exalted. This is something of a pacing experiment. In that area it did what I wanted it too.
1. Chapter 1

The best way to kill someone for revenge is an intensely personal choice. Each of the four times I've done it over the seventy eight years of my unnaturally long youth has been different. The first time I had lied to myself until I believed that my motivation was a desire to prevent the child-murdering bastard from doing it again, and so I dispatched him with a knife in the dark as painlessly as I could. Despite what he deserved, and I wanted, he felt no pain. After that, the guard captain who had silently countenanced his superior's despicable practices had been more violent. While I'd intended another simple slaying, he'd caught some inkling of my intent. The resultant sword fight had left half of Chagres on fire. I don't know if the captain had bleed to death before the building collapsed on him. With the wounds he'd given me, I hadn't stayed long enough to find out. But as the cold nights went by on the blasted plains of Na, and wind whipped sleet scored the rocks of my shelter, I tried my best to hope he'd gone to his end painlessly. With his aorta nicked, it would have been close.

We'd fallen through the roof together, when the licking flames had gotten to the dry ceiling beams. Even before the shale had given way underneath our feet, we had been hopping about as tendrils of sooty flame reached through the tiles. Then there had been a terrible crash, flailing blades as we tumbled, and somehow I'd gone through a wall. The few people who'd rushed from their beds to see the horror had helped me away from the blaze. They thought I'd just been a victim of the fire, and had time to save my blade and nothing else. That was a common mentality in the city of Chagres. When all who remembered me would have died, I hoped to return there.

The third one had been simple if the hardest. That thing should never have existed under starlit skies, and the touch of the sun burned its flesh. I'd initially gone hunting it out of ideological reasons, but when it killed the priest who was helping me everything became personal. Still, demon, monster, or nameless aberration, it presented me a curiously morally transparent victim in the end. It was all hate and spite, without the capacity for mercy. After dismembering it and dragging the cursing pieces into the light so the purifying sun could burn it away like an infection, I'd actually felt some form of satisfaction. That was the only time I've been able to let go of the built up tension from a murder easily. I walked away without any regrets at all.

In the Forrest of Mad Gods, when I crouched over dying Lemora, I knew that there was going to be no similar purging catharsis. Oh, she certainly deserved it more. The whispering souls of her victims had formed a shrieking, ethereal vortex that raged about her head. Though the occult winds stirred neither paper nor the expanding pool of blood that spread from her head wound like a crimson halo, to me it raged like a great sandstorm, confined to the dark room. One by one she tried to bind them to her and knit her severed veins with their power. Each time she pulled one from the tortured mass I would sever her bonds on it, and let the poor dead thing go on to its next life.

If there is any justice in this world, a thing I've come to doubt, Lemora would find her next life a hell of her own making. She knew that as well, and it must have driven her to the desperation to keep living, even as soul after stolen soul of her victims I liberated from her forever. Like an infection, she took a very long time to die, and I stayed with her to the very end. I cut apart dark magic and necromancy, and the gifts of demons she'd bargained with for extra hours. Killing her didn't take half as long as making sure it would stick. When I finally left her den of sin, horrors, and simple filth I felt as dirty as her dark powers had been.

As is my custom, developed from the incident with the guard captain, I poured oil over the building until it erupted like a volcano at the first touch of a match. The grime encrusted walls had sucked the oil up, becoming nearly explosive in their inflammability. Dirty thatch vaporized as a pillar of flame roared up to the stars. After the windows started imploding, the suction very nearly took me in to join the dark sorceress's fate as the hungry flames greedily devoured air. I clung to a tree bent almost parallel to the ground and spat bond breaking spells into the blaze, feeling with my magical senses the bound vortex of poor souls straining against the dead magus' prison. It took nine emerald counter magics to break the anchor fetters, and a tenth more powerful than all the rest combined to crack the thing itself like a necromantic egg. Then the evil thing crumpled, and its hatchling blew away into the night as the dead fled that horrible place.

By dawn the fire was gone, and bone white ashes lay in a pile on the ground. I poked through them until noon, ignoring the heat that blistered skin through my boots. I've been the victim of obsession enough times to realize that my guilt for not recognizing Lemora's debauchery earlier was threating to consume me. It had to be stopped before it drove me mad. So I ensured that there were no more captured victims bound to soulstones or minor charms to power her devices. The fire had taken care of her blasphemous books. All that remained was to canvass the pile of detritus until I was sure I had given the least of mercies to all of her victims, the freedom from this world that should have been guaranteed with death. It was partially for me, so I could turn my back on this incident as well.

That mercy did not come easily.

Morning breezes blew away the cinders. Underneath were seared flagstones of the floor, set in the dirt as a foundation. I pried them up one by one, and hauled them each fifty yards to the edge of the Ascending Veils Bluff. At the bottom of that was the chaotic river Meander, that stormed down its ravine path with mad intensity completely at odds with the name. Lemora's magic both required its chaos and was undone by immersion in it, a dangerous dichotomy that was typical of the dark powers. I heaved the stones of her house into the river and watched them sink. It took me the rest of the day, and I slept well that night.

At dawn I searched the hole because I had to be sure. There was an astonishing density of insect life in the dirt, and every time I turned the earth with my sword grubs burrowed out of sight in mass quantities. While I'm not terribly fond of such things since they remind me of tombs and rotting flesh, things that go hand in hand with the nefarious entities I've devoted my life to stopping, I'm not afraid of them either. My superstitions are under tight enough check that they don't cloud my opinions of the little beasties. They're as natural as death should be and make sure the living don't keep their valuable nutrients from the next thing that needs them. Still, I don't like them. I searched the area extra thoroughly as penance for not catching her evil earlier. Had I not, I would have missed the small metal medallion that had been hidden under the hearth.

My sword, Agate, which I may as well describe now, has slightly more than three feet of curved blade. The metal is some exotic mixture of steel, crystal, and jade the color of deep sea ice bobbing along in ship-murdering icebergs. The man who sold it to me didn't know where it was from, who'd made it, or what it had been made for, and only consultation with several far flung metallurgists enabled me to learn the components at all. Metallurgists aren't commonly sword masters, and none of them could explain the shape better than the material. It's too fat to be a saber, almost too long to be a katana, and on the back, shortly below the point, is a wicked barb that makes thrusting almost useless. Well, it thrusts just fine, but removing the sword afterwards is somewhat tricky. I keep it because I took a strange liking to it, which I justify to myself with the fact that the weapon is basically indestructible. When I was trapped in the Frost Whore's caves to die, my first failed escape attempt involved me whacking the granite walls of my prison with it for eight hours a day for nearly three weeks. The blade wasn't even scratched. Now, free of that place, I liked a weapon that never broke or dulled, and considered that reliability enough overcome the impracticality of the shape. (If you're curious, the granite walls showed about as much result from my attempt to dig through as the blade. I gave that up, fashioned a rope from my hair, and tried to use that to climb out. That didn't work either, but the Frost Whore had been watching via magic and came in person to taunt me. I pegged her in the face with a rock and broke a few of her teeth. That evening she mispronounced the words of the spell that kept my own magic in check. I noticed, cast "Boil Water" on the icy bars over the waste hole, and escaped through there. You're not getting details beyond that because I'm still trying to repress those memories.)

My blade sank into the packed dirt easily but hit something several feet down. When I withdrew it, there was a medallion dangling from the rear barb. Several feet of braided cord held a dozen pea-sized beads. It was too long to be a necklace but didn't look sturdy enough to be some kind of belt. Nor was there a clasp. The cord seemed to be fastened to itself with a oval of metal roughly the weight of a dram coin. At first it looked like tarnished silver. I stared at it for a minute, trying to figure out if it was magical, and concluded that on closer inspection it reminded me more of verdigrised brass. Several minutes more study reminded me of rusted metal. None of these substances had any business resembling each other. Perhaps the filth that encrusted it would explain the confusion. I put it aside and finished my search of the premises. There was nothing that required further attention.

Taking the little medallion, I returned to the gorge that held the Meander. Descending to a point where I had access to a small pool, I carefully rinsed the thing off. The cord disintegrated almost instantly on contact with water, assuring me that it was arcane in nature, and the beads vanished one by one like soap bubbles. As each one vanished there was a silent sigh of relief, and a sensation of a lost wanderer finally finding a way home. Only the metal piece remained in my hand. Deep relief hit me too, and I was very glad I'd taken such care.

Inspecting the medallion closer confused me even more. Now that it was clean, the uncertainty of its composition was markedly greater. I began to wonder if it was rusted gold, which as far as I knew couldn't happen. Finally deciding there was no way of telling, I put it down and carefully worked up my strongest spell of bond breaking. I didn't really know what I would be dealing with, so I made sure I had plenty of room for a melee if there was something in there that didn't want to be released before unleashing it. With blade in hand, I shaped the magic and unleashed it with a cry of "Breaking of a thousand locks!" in the ancient tongue of the gods and their primordial pregenerators.

No demons appeared. What did was the ghost of a little old man, bent with age, whose pale beard reached almost to his belt. He looked very solid, escape for the occasional spray from the river that passed through him effortlessly. I hit him with a demon banishment on general principle, but it did nothing. Moderately certain now he was what he looked like, I inspected the little ghost. His bald head was wrinkled with age and spotted here and there. His clothing was very simple, farmer's boots under a knee length tunic. I'd seen thousands of peasants dressed just like that tilling fields across half he known world. The old man stared at me in confusion, and then looked around bewildered. He had the attitude of someone just awoken. That was pleasant if odd, because normally souls who get shoved into soulstones do so kicking and screaming. This one must have gone willingly.

"Who're you?" I asked, pointing my sword at him.

"Who're you?" he countered. The language he used was archaic, halfway between the colloquial tongue I used natively and the old tongues I cast spells in. Between the two, I could figure out his meaning, and reply in kind.

That didn't mean I was going to play the 'no, I asked you first' game. Besides, courtesy was with him. I should have introduced myself. "My name is Stark Vision of Inevitability," I said, which was true enough. "I just slew the black witch Lemora, who had been practicing soul entanglement. Were you one of her bound prisoners?"

"I was bound, but not by her, nor was I a prisoner," he replied. His voice was firm. "I went willingly to serve my children. Our farm had been the subject of poxes for two decades, and when I was about to meet my end I volunteered to be placed into this charm so that my influence could protect them. I remember being placed in a shrine of honor, and watching generations of my descendants pass under my eye. When the poxes vanished, I ceased my watch, and slept in the medallion. It's presence should had protected my family while I slumbered."

That rang noble if it was true. "Where did you live?"

"The kingdom of Aphor on the banks of the Mer."

That meant nothing to me. "Did you know of the Realm?" I asked, referring to the biggest government currently in the world. The old man shook his head. "What about the Shogunate?"

"I know that. It was the empire of the south," he replied.

The Shogunate had fallen just shy of eight hundred years ago. Lemora may have been several hundred years old, given how she had used her powers to remain young and vital, but had certainly not been around long enough to see that. "Well, old ghost, it's likely that at some point your medallion left the farm of your children. It came to the possession of the witch, and you've been protecting her domicile for at least a century. But now she's dead, and I'm going to send you on. Be peaceful in the next life."

"But what of my children?"

"Never heard of them, nor the land of Aphor. Also, you're in the east now, so if the Shogunate was to your south, you're at least a few thousand miles off. By now they're either gone, or there's so many of them they're doing well." I considered how to send this one on. If he'd been put in the medallion willingly, he was bound to Creation via fetters of his own making. Smashing them with magic would be profoundly rude at best, and basically murder from another point of view. I was all right with that if necessary but would rather not.

"How long has passed?"

"A millenia. Maybe more, maybe a little less."

"You have not heard of them?"

"I don't know who to hear of, for you've not told me your name," I pointed out.

The old man considered this. "My apologies, Stark Vision of Inevitability. I- I am-" he paused, and thought long and hard. "I do not remember my name, nor who my family is. A shame, because I cannot protect them now."

"In that case, may I send you to the next life?" I asked politely. "With your permission, I can make it both quick and painless."

"I'm dead, what fear do I have of pain?" he replied, amused.

"If that was the case, I wouldn't have had to kill Lemora as desperately," I replied sadly. His words showed the naive assumption that things were the way they should be. If only he had been right.

"Lemora was the black witch?" the old man asked. "The one you slew?"

"Yes," I said. "The world is a better place now that she is gone."

"Son, I may have been dead a long time, but I lived for a long time before that. I know a hollow statement when I hear one," he replied.

I looked down at my blade blankly. There wasn't a trace of blood on it. There never was. I don't know if it drank the blood it spilled, or the same magic that rendered it impervious cleaned it. The result was the same, that it looked oddly pure for something I'd used to kill so many people with. "She was my wife for a time."

"Oh. I'm sorry, my son." he said sadly. His voice seemed honestly grieved.

"It happens," I said, which was another hollow, stupid thing to say. "But it is done. I'm undoing all her works, and the other souls bound to you are gone now." I dragged my mind back to business.

"Other souls?" he asked curiously, noticing the tactless change of topic.

"Your medallion was linked to a score, perhaps more, bound souls. I freed them before yours."

"Would you look in on my family after I am gone, then? See if you can find them, and attend them as best you can. It will be a simple, healthy work, with little blood spilling. A fine end to a bad business," he requested politely.

His words made sense. My previous plans for a next step involved either alcohol induced unconsciousness for a while, or screaming my rage to an uncaring sky. Helping people, especially descendants of someone freed from Lemora's clutches, would give me a nice closure, and end this affair charitably. That would be good. I wanted to have killed her for good reasons, not because I was furious that she'd lied to me for so long. Maybe this would swing the balance.

"I would be happy to, though without your name I have no idea who they might be," I told him honestly.

"When the wizard placed me in the medallion, he said my love for my family would bind me to them, keeping me on this world. Perhaps-"

"Absolutely not," I interrupted, spitting vehemence with my words. The old man stopped, startled by my sudden rudeness. I took a deep breath and forced myself calm. "My apologies. I will not use the dead. I understand you were bound willingly, but I will never countenance such things, nor utilize their effects. When I leave here, you will be free to leave this world."

"What if I refuse your offer?" he asked pointedly.

"I would rather you go willingly," I replied levelly.

"So it's like that."

"Indeed."

"Very well. If I go willingly, will you do your best to find my descendants and give them such aid as you are able?" he offered. "Promise me you will make your best effort, and I will ask nothing else of you."

That was reasonable. All things considered, I really didn't want to send him away the hard way. It was vaguely distasteful and smacked of disrespect for the dead. Since respecting the dead was half the reason I did what I did, it would be counter to my principles. "Very well," I accepted. "Let me think a moment."

He nodded, and stood silently while I sat on a rock to consider. It takes a ghost no effort to stand, so I didn't bother to invite him to sit next to me. My blade was still in my hand, and the weight of it was comforting. I considered it and the ghost.

"Sir, do you remember what you looked like in youth? If you could show me that, perhaps it might help," I suggested, going over the abilities of ghosts. Most of them are bound to their form at the moment of death, but all the ghosts I met personally had died in violence. The rules might be different for ones who go peacefully.

It seemed to be the case. The old man's form rippled, and grew indistinct like he had retreated into fog. Then it clarified. He was taller, well formed, and majestic of face. His body was immaculate, and his skin was flawless. Before his eyes had been milky with age, but now were a piercing blue under thick black brows. His beard vanished, a foot of thick black hair tumbled from the back of his head, and his body projected almost tangible vitality. Clearly, the old man had a high opinion of what he'd looked like as a younger man.

"My," I observed dryly. "I'll go looking in the temples of the gods of heroes immediately."

The ghost glanced down at himself and then smiled. "The foible of age is a rose tinted memory," he excused himself.

"It seems so," I agreed. "Unfortunately, this doesn't help me. But I have a bit of paper here, and some charcoal. I'll make a sketch. Not that I think your descendants will look anything like you after all this time, but if you had any famous ones, perhaps a picture of them will remain. Do you, that you know of? Have any famous descendants?" I produced the paper as I spoke and started drawing.

"We were the greatest farmers of Aphor," he replied loftily then laughed at his own hubris. "But that doesn't get one commemorated with paintings or sculpture. I'm sorry, I only know what of my family came to the shrine where my amulet rested. No great personages came through there."

"Well, I'll see what I can do," I assured him. I spent a few minutes capturing his likeness as best I could and then did another of his features when he reverted to old age. It seemed to tire the ghost to remain young. After the sketches were done, I carefully rolled the charcoal and put it in a scroll tube for safe keeping. "I have a few ideas of where I can go."

"Thank you. You'll do more good than I will in that medallion," he said. I was touched by his serene attitude. It was likely a reflection of his state of mind at the point he had died. I hoped my end would be similarly restful.

"Are you ready?" I asked, standing and drawing my blade.

"I have been ready for death for millenia," he explained simply. "Do your best for my kin, and I shall have no regrets."

"Severing of Unneeded Fetters," I whispered and whipped the blade across his form. Drawing it like a razor across the ghost sent cascades of sparks from his ephemeral skin, like the edge of the blade was slicing through steel chains. If a ghost is unwilling, I'm forced to rely on other, more brutal techniques, but in this case the old man showed not a touch of discomfort. Then the point of my sword past through him, and there was an arcane ringing like a bell tapped with a chain. The old man smiled at me and whispered a shadowy benediction as he dissolved into mist that was born away by the rushing wind. Once again I was alone in the gorge. I slid the blade back into its sheath and departed.

It was certain that anyone who bore enough filial resemblance to the nameless ghost to be recognized would be dead. If they were famous enough to be immortalized in art, they most likely died rich. Therefor I went directly to Sijan, city of the dead. It was several thousand miles west, mostly down river. The run did me good.

When the city rose from the horizon with the dawn, I strolled into the grim silences of the tomb ridden necropolis. The place had none of the evil associated with monuments to death. The city was in business, and given that its purview was the one great constant of life, they had no impatience for new clientel. Vast tombs to the richly deceased rose behind the tall outer wall, while communal mausoleums stood like a thousand towers. The air was full of incense. When I strolled up to the gate guards, I could hear funeral hymns being sung in a dozen languages. Some were mournful, some full of hope, and occasionally one was upbeat, rejoicing in the life completed. The gate guards wore full length black robes and greeted me formally when I arrived.

"Good morning, sir. Welcome to Sijan, city of the dead."

"Good morning, gentlemen. A ghost asked me to find his descendants and take care of them. I'm here to find any information on who they might be."

"We shall endeavor to help you," the guard replied. He indicated a black robed acolyte within, who informed me he would take me to the city proper. I fell in behind him.

Within Sijan the living stay underground, leaving the surface for the spreading confluence of tombs. Given the likelihood of unappreciated spirits rising as vengeful ghosts, the respect shown to the city's deceased majority is reasonable. Still, going underground between towering mortuary edifices behind a black robed acolyte was unpleasant. Ultimated I was taken to the rooms of a revered librarian. His walls were covered in serious looking documents, and the occasional grim painting. He was dressed in the omnipresent black with white and yellow tassels on his robe. He had very short white hair that formed a ring around his bald spot, neither mustache nor beard, and the thin build of an academic who eats little and moves less. He was as pale as one would expect. We exchanged pleasantries. Up until this point no one had asked me my name. While I'd considered using an alias, I decided to err on the side of honesty.

To his opening questions, I responded, "My name is Stark Vision of Inevitability. I was contacted by a ghost from the land of Aphor on the river Mer. In order for him to pass on peacefully he wanted me to attempt to find his descendants and help them as best I could. Unfortunately he was dead so long he did not remember his name."

"Mention of Aphor is not unknown to certain old texts from the Shogunate. I am willing to help you, but my time is not free," the elderly man replied. These people weren't into death for free.

We negotiated a price which taxed my limited funds without overburdening them. After that the man introduced himself as Wood Elm, which surprised me slightly. I was expecting Blissful Repose or something similarly baroque. Still, after money changed hands he rose and we turned out attention to his documents.

If you want a detailed lesson in history I would have recommended you talk to this guy. He narrated the course of his investigation as he pursued it, giving me an incidental lecture that was surprisingly interesting. History comes to me as a dry subject, about a bunch of dead people doing things that don't matter any more, but his perspective was a bit warmer. To abridge, when the Shogunate fell just shy of eight hundred years ago to plague and a massive invasion of the Fair Folk known as the Balorian Crusade, the limits of reality retreated thousands of miles from the encircling Wyld. Aphor had been a nice little place cradled in the cup of soaring mountains far to the north and east of the modern outer limits of the world. It simply didn't exist any more.

While one might normally expect them to all be dead, I pointed out that the ghost had still been clinging to our world. Since he wanted to serve his children, that meant someone should have survived. We pored through the ancient documents until mention was found of an emergency evacuation conducted by a splintering fragment of the old army. Several hundred soldiers, beset on all sides by vastly outnumbering fae and cut off from support had made a mad run to the outskirts of the world even as it fell into chaos. They'd grabbed everyone they could get their hands on and mention of 'people of Aphor' appeared. Unfortunately, the Wyld got the best of them as they retreated. No mention of them surviving was made.

"Then how did we get the records?" I asked.

"Well, these are the personal chronicles of Yvores Alson, one of the few Dragon-Blooded historians who survived the Balorian Crusade. He was captured by the fae, and escaped when the Scarlet Empress unleashed the Sword of Creation, nearly seven years after he fell into their power. These chronicles dictate his ravings," Wood Elm explained. "This chapter chronicles stories he claims were told to him by the Fair Folk, seeking to break his will with stories of despair."

"Fantastic," I murmured. "So it's all a lie."

"Unlikely. One of their favorite tactics at the time was half truths. Enough truth to hide a barbed hook, enough lie to set it deeply. Besides, this ghost still possesses his fetter, so it must be anchored to something."

"Possessed," I corrected absently.

"He's moved on?"

"Very peacefully."

"May his soul have repose. Still, up until that point, at least someone must have survived. This is the only report I have."

"Any chance of any others?"

"I will carefully search the other records I have of that time," Wood Elm assured me.

"This might help," I added, producing the portrait. "That's what he looked like in youth, that's what he looked like now. Perhaps it will give you some guidance."

He took the rolled paper in his thin hands and examined it carefully. His fingers were so thin they were like spider legs. "Very common features for the old shogunate. Notice the aquiline nose, and heavy brows. Possibly northern descent, with strong blood from the Blessed Isle. It was possible, if not probable, his people moved out to Aphor during the initial push towards settlement in the dawn of the Shogunate. He was probably deceased for five hundred years or more before the Balorian crusade."

"Remind you of anyone?" I asked. "Anyone buried around here, perhaps?"

"I do not know. I will certainly conduct your inquiries to the archivist of the entombed. It will be only the slightest of extra charges."

We discussed exactly what 'slightest' meant and found our opinions on the topic differed quite widely. Ultimately we agreed on a price again, but it wasn't slight. I retired to reasonably priced accommodations to wait.

Sijan's nightlife is sadly lacking. Pretty much everyone is there to bury someone or attend a funeral. I had hoped for wild parties as people rejoiced that they, at least, didn't need the personal attention of this place, but the gloomy mood dampened that completely. I wound up sleeping most of the time, and pretending I was someplace else the rest.

After close to a week of watching my funds diminish I received word that my results had been compiled. Wood Elm met me in his office, and diplomatically read me the results of his research. To paraphrase, there were none. There was no one in the city for a final repose who matched up with both the ghost's appearance and origins either. The only possible lead was that Yvores Alson, the dead historian, rested here, and had been known to appear to people who offered him the proper assortment of grave goods. These the Sijanese were willing to provide for a very reasonable price. Bidding farewell to the rest of my funds, I accepted.

Yvores Alson had been interred at great expense. His final resting place consisted of a fourteen foot pyramid-shaped edifice of white marble. The base was a rectangle twenty feet by forty, and the top was a twenty foot ridge, crested with sculptures of old dead people doing things I didn't care about. Around the marble edifice was a well tended hedge twice the height of a man. The result was a secluded area where visitors could be alone with the dead. Alone except for the guards, that is. Apparently the place had a problem with crypt robbers, and so my visitation would be chaperoned by two respectful gentlemen in the somber black robes everyone around here wore. We waited for twilight, and then I let them conduct rituals inclined to raise the ghost I wanted to speak with.

It didn't appear. We waited until midnight as the acolytes intoned sacred chants that seemed to consist mostly of groaning. Eventually it became apparent that the dead historian was remaining silent that night. I asked the two guards for a moment's privacy, and knelt at the tomb while they withdrew to the small opening in the encircling hedge. They turned their backs, giving me some slight privacy while remaining close enough to prevent me from any depredations. I assumed a properly reverential pose, and opened my eyes to the spirit world.

Yvores Alson wasn't there. He wasn't in the tomb either. No spiritual fetters linked any ghosts to the the resting place. I glanced around, and observed some of the neighboring tombs that overtopped the green hedge. A few of them had easily visible fetters. Mulling over this I said a couple words for the departed historian and rose.

Before rejoining the guards I stared hard at the ground. The grass was freshly crushed in the form of boot prints. I wore sandals, and the guards both wore formal shoes. Comparing them to mine showed me that the feet were about an inch longer than mine, and the prints sank deeply into the soft, well tended earth. With my head bowed, like I was deep in reverie, I followed the steps. Whoever it had been had approached, knelt where I had, and then waited. After that the steps got muddled. I cocked my head and pondered. It seemed impossible, yet suddenly I figured that the boot owner had lunged. Gaging the direction the lunge had gone led me to the monolithic tomb. The tall flowers about its base were undisturbed. Several of them were thorned varieties. The freshly turned earth about them showed no footprints. Nodding to myself, I joined the two guards.

"We're sorry the deceased did not hear your solicitation, revered sir," one of them consoled me.

I nodded, pausing at the gateway in the hedge. Pretending to be momentarily overcome, I looked down, staring at the places they had stood. There was nothing to learn, as they had disturbed the earth too much for trivial remnants of past visitors to remain. "I appreciate your concern. What was the last time Yvores Alson appeared to a supplicant?"

"Perhaps nine months ago. A party of historians from the city of Lookshy came to discuss some things with him. That's the last we were here, and this sector of tombs is within our usual purview."

Nine months ago I'd been living in deceived marital bliss with Lemora, and this quest had not entered my mind. Those boot prints weren't more than a week old. Between when I came to Sijan and now, someone had rekilled the historian. Interesting.

"Ah, well, May he rest easily. I'll be returning to my rooms then."

They lead me to one of the larger stairways that plunged under the earth. Departing downwards, I passed several dozen yards under the earth. The stonework was in excellent repair, showing recent renovations. Multifaceted crystals lit the way, gleaming a different color from each polished face, doing much to abate the gloom of the place. At the bottom of the stairway was another guard who sat by a heavy iron gate he could close as necessary. We exchanged pleasantries, and I went looking for a place to think.

Since I was completely out of money, I passed the night in a dim chapel. Candles lit the frescoes of old gods, showing their scenes of triumph against foes now as forgotten as they. They flickered slowly, burning down to pools of wax while I considered the old images. To be thorough I compared features against the nameless ghost. Occasionally miracles do happen, but this wasn't one of those times.

There was a discrete way to do this and a blatant way. The discrete way was going to take time. The blatant way would get me run out of the city, pursued by guards, the local police, and possibly angry gods. For that reason alone I was tempted to do this the blatant way. Running half the course of the Meander had done marvels for my stride. Yet I chose caution. Someone was acting against me, and shown considerable aptitude. In spite of that, they had underestimated me badly when they'd assumed I wouldn't notice the traces of their actions. By kicking in Wood Elm's door and beating knowledge out of him, I would inform anyone interested in my capabilities with specifications, as well as making enemies. There would not be a second chance if I burned my bridges here.

Shortly after the morning meal was served in the city's visiting houses, I went to speak to Wood Elm a final time. My stomach was irritable with me for being empty, a condition exacerbated by sleep deprivation from last night. When a young attendant showed me in to the simple library the elderly archivist worked in, he was already there. I devoted extra effort to remaining calm.

"I was told that Yvores did not rise to meet your invitations last night," the old man said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"It was a nuisance," I agreed. "But I imagine even the dead grow tired of being summoned back to the world of the living. They've earned their rest. Is the historian visited often?"

"There's a party of scholars from Lookshy that come here every few years," Wood Elm replied. He seemed comfortable with the specifics. "They're putting together treatises on military strategies of the fall of the Shogunate. They've come at least half a dozen times now, so clearly the results are profitable for them."

"When was the last time they came?" I asked.

"Less than a year ago. In the spring, I believe," he said.

That matched up with the numbers from the guard I'd spoken too. "Is there anyone else who visits?"

"Not that I know of. Of course, up until last year we didn't have the rash of tomb robbing we're enduring now. Before then anyone could simply visit the deceased as they felt so inclined. We don't know what happened during that time."

"But since then, has there been anyone? Recently even, within a week or so?"

"Not so far as I know. You're the only one who has expressed any interest in that time," he assured me.

I remained impassive while trying to tell if he was lying. Only succeeding on the first count, I considered whether or not to abandon plan 'subtle' in favor of plan 'mind-blasting magic.'

As usual, I opted against it. The moral ramifications of overwriting someone's will with magic lead to an ethical quagmire I was loath to explore. Having always considered free will one of the indelible dividing lines between anything alive versus the animate dead or automata, forcibly adjusting that through arcane power seemed the high end of a treacherous slope into necromancy. I had never seen anyone, ever, dabble into necrotic magic without ultimately falling into corruption. I wasn't going to try to be the first. Now, in the city of the dead I contemplated the very much alive Wood Elm, an old man who seemed to live quite happily with his books and funereal rituals, and asked myself if the secrets I wanted out of him were enough to kill for. They were not. If it wasn't worth killing over, it wasn't worth taking away his free will with my dominating mind. His word would have to be good enough.

"These gentlemen from Lookshy, they work for the military academy?" I asked.

"You think they may have learned something from Yvores Alson about your ghost's descendants?"

"It seems a reasonable area of pursuit," I replied with a shrug.

"Indeed. In actuality, while they are funded by one, perhaps several, of the military academies, they are mostly independent. I believe Gens Haid, a minor noble family of slight means, has commissioned the work. Since you were unable to contact the spirit directly, I would be more than happy to pen a letter of introduction for you. Consider it a free gift, considering the money you've spent already."

That was quite a bit cheaper than anything I'd come to expect from the Sijanese. I thanked Wood Elm profusely. He produced a sheet of vellum, dashed off a quick letter, and placed it in a waxed lambskin case for me, sealing it with black wax. His signet was of laurel wreaths under star speckled skies. After that he saw me to his door.

"I'm sorry I could not be of more help. Please come again. It's such a pleasure to ply my trade on someone who can return breathing," he said. I think it might have been intended to be a joke. With that he waved his hand in front of my chest. It was a southern gesture that meant 'farewell.' I ignored that, grabbed his hand, and shook it firmly. He accepted the mild affront with good grace, and we parted.

Wood Elm hadn't held a sword in weeks, if ever. A driving forward thrust causes the handle to rake the palm unless one already has well developed sword callouses of a singular type. The old man didn't. I hadn't expected him too. That didn't mean I intended to take it on faith.

I departed Sijan with as little excitement as I'd arrived. By noon I was making my way south over the river Avarice, and then west along a little used road over sweeping hills. Soon the dark city was hidden by evergreen trees and gray leafed oaks. The road left the latitudinal river to cut south by south west, circumnavigating the salt marshes at the conjunction of the Avarice and the River of Tears. I had set into an easy jog, covering empty miles with some speed until my stomach's complaints proved too much to be ignored. After that I left the road for the trees and stalked game until I finally ran down a bear. At my charge it rose up to roar at me, an intimidating act that left it open. A single whip-like stroke took its head off neatly, and then there was bear meat for supper.

In this manner I made my way south, letting time flow behind me like the miles underfoot. Occasionally I passed caravans, bound to either the grim Sijan or beyond it. Distinguishing their destinations was as simple as checking for a cargo of coffins. No one gave me any trouble. The land here was neither desolate nor filled. Towns stood alone, surrounded by their fields and orchards, and separated from each other like islands in a sea of trees. Road conditions varied widely from near perfect to rutted bogs. If there were bandits, they did not bother me.

When the towns grew common enough that I could see one from another I knew that Lookshy was not far. The air smelled of salt water. Mist settled over the countryside one dawn and hugged the low places. It defied the sun all morning, and only the full blast of noon drove it away. As the seething fog boiled into the air, I crested a hill and saw the towering walls of Lookshy, home of the orphaned Seventh Legion, last remnant of the fallen Shogunate. If the city was as I recalled, it would be full of the immortal Dragon-Blooded, puissant warriors and lords of terrestrial creation. There were many of them, and they were filled with their own power.


	2. Chapter 2

As Sijan had been a city of the dead, it had been consumed with a respectful stillness. Like a graveyard, the most prevalent terrors there would have been the imaginary creations of visitors. Residents had learned to still their imaginations or gone insane. Lookshy was a city of the living. The entire city struck me at once as a temple to action. The air was full of smoke from the foundries below, the natural byproducts of a thousand people doing things involving fire and iron. Bridges connected the north and south sides of the Yanaze River that people might cross, and cross again, bearing with them whatever end results their actions had produced. Further up stream the river became the Meander, which I had followed and left some months ago on the way to Sijan. Bright mailed soldiers strode about, intruding on the business of the civilians, and everything outside the gates a jumble of chaotic interactions that must have been placid compared to the raucous tumult of human life going on with the massive walls. The first bridge I came to required a toll I couldn't afford, so I slipped my blade Elsewhere and swam the river.

There were two lines to get through the gates of Lookshy. The first wrapped and twisted before the towering walls like a petrified snake, immobilized during the climax of a self-contorting seizure. The second required a donation in silver of value directly depending on the extent of the pythonic queue beside it. Staring at the back of the first line by my lack of funds, I felt a powerful temptation to let magic and a hypnotic tongue get me through the ordeal quickly. This was not the first time this temptation had tried to seduce me. Toll plazas and traffic jams may consume my soul yet. Still, I held resolute and endured the waiting. The day after I entered the queue I entered the city. The guards were at least able to give me easy instructions to the domains of Gens Haid, and I entered the vortex that is Lookshy's infrastructure.

Eventually the cataract that was the Boulevard of Heroes deposited me in the reception area before a nice estate of marble and blue coral. Vaulted arches supported towering ceilings, none less than twenty feet from the floor, frescoed with simple patterns of azure and white. All around this color scheme was repeated. The floor was made to represent beating waves, and they marched up the walls until metamorphing into a cloudy sky above. A blue jacketed servant took my scroll of introduction and lead me to a small antechamber. Not long later Haid himself appeared.

Somewhat taller than average, he had piercing blue eyes the color of cloudless skies. His hair was pale white like sea foam on the deep oceans, an impression furthered by being naturally curly. It barely reached below his ears, but still managed to convey the impression of shrouding a head just emerged from the deeps. Haid wore a simple tunic of spider silk, but from his belt hung a saber of jade, inlaid with sapphires. On one of his fingers was a fat ring with an ornate square head, most likely a family crest. In that hand was a rolled parchment. With him came two men who stood at his shoulders, bracketing him formally. Both had the same complexion, but wore their hair much shorter. They reeked of the military. The short, gladius swords on their hips confirmed the impression.

"Good morning, sir. Welcome to my home," he said simply.

"Good morning, Lord Haid. My name is Stark Vision of Inevitability. I come to you from Sijan, where I attempted to contact a deceased historian of the name Yvores Alson. When his ghost did not appear to me, the estimable Wood Elm directed me to you, mentioning that several members of your house spoke to the ghost regularly for historical information. I'd like to talk to them. Wood Elm provided me with this letter of introduction," I finished, handing him the scroll. Haid took it with a nod, and cracked the seal. He read it quickly. Afterwards he replaced it in the case and returned it to me.

"That seems very reasonable," he said simply. "Hrack will take you to the western library, where my uncles do their work. They are the ones you want to speak with. I hope they can assist you."

"Thank you," I replied, trying to be gracious.

"But before you meet them, would you like to be taken to a room to eat and refresh yourself?" Haid offered solicitously. "You have the dirt of the road on you, and Sijan is many leagues away. Please accept the hospitality of my house, while you are here."

"That would be very kind," I added, happily. I hadn't eaten in a couple days now, and while one gets used to ignoring hunger when convenient, satisfying it is always more pleasant.

"Excellent. Hrack, to the Dawn Cove suite with him. Stark Vision of Inevitability, go with my nephew and refresh yourself."

"Your hospitality is most welcome, Lord Haid. I am deeply in your debt," I replied, bowing slightly.

Haid nodded and left, while Hrack gestured me to follow him. Hrack seemed to be of the opinion he should be seen and not heard, which combined with his errand-boy status confirmed for me his apparent youth. One learned never to take these things at face value with Dragon-Bloods. Haid himself could pass for his early twenties, and I doubted he was within a hundred years of being as young as I.

Hrack left me at the door to my rooms. While I was glancing around a maid appeared with lunch on a tray. She was pretty and said little before leaving. She did that very quickly, which seemed somewhat strange. I noted it. I took the tray into the attached bathroom and ran hot water into the tub. It was a bronze affair with feet that looked like dolphin tails. Then I divested myself of clothes, left them on the bed so someone could wash them, and sat down to eat and soak. My meal lasted slightly over two minutes.

Armed men kicked the doors open while I was assembling a sandwich and charged into the room. Half a dozen leveled spears at me, stabbing them almost into the water. I dropped the half-complete sandwich into my mouth as they barked orders. A moment later Haid arrived, bringing his two minions with him, and they considered me from the doorway.

"This is really good stuff," I told him truthfully, gesturing with my coffee cup. "Join me for a cup?"

"No, but I hope you enjoyed it. It will be the last you ever have."

"What if I assured you that you don't need to get in the bathtub?" I asked. "Sometimes my friends and I all jump in together, but if you'd rather drink from there, that's fine. I don't mind."

"You are under arrest, clod, for conspiring to murder members of my family, the murder of Wood Elm, and the annihilation of the ghost of Yvores Alson, a rare source of information from the age of the Shogunate and posthumous hero of the Seventh Legion!" he snapped. His attempt to outdo me in urbanity failed completely when his face purpled with anger.

So Wood Elm had not been a bad guy after all. I felt better about respecting his cognitive privacy. Still, it was a tragedy his death was necessary to prove that.

In the room were the six mortal soldiers, all of whom were in a half circle around the bath tub. They had short spears, not more than four feet long, haft and head, leveled at me. They had functional armor, breastplates, arm and shin greaves, but no helmets. Behind them, stood Haid and his two minions, unchanged from when I last saw them minutes ago.

"What about either of you?" I offered. "Join me for a cup?"

"Get him!" snarled Haid.

I dropped the tray, heaved myself sideways from the tub and landed sideways across the spears. With my back hand I snatched the tub from the floor and swung it overhead to smash into the guards chests. The impact hurled four of them backwards as the thousand pounds of metal bathtub drove their armored bodies through the interior wall. I tumbled to the ground as the sudsy bathwater crashed through the air above me, filling the room with obscuring bubbles. Guard feet were above my head. I rolled right and let mis-aimed lunges strike marble harmlessly before snatching at armored feet. Pulling hard enough that the man was hurled bodily forward, I flung him at the other standing mortal, and let the recoil slide me across the slick floor to the opposing wall. Rolling onto my feet put me upright as Haid and his two henchmen charged me, weapons drawn.

I hurled the sink at them. Haid's saber flashed and shattered it, but fragments of marble scored his allies' faces. I chucked the mirror after, which Haid ducked, and punched through the wall to sever the hot water pipes within. Sprays of near boiling water exploded from the walls, scalded my noble hosts, and forced them to hurl themselves backwards. It was that or lunge blindly at me through the cloud of steam. I put my head down, charged the thin wall beside me, and crashed through slate.

In the next room, the four guards were groaning under the tub. Those were incredible breastplates. I jumped over them, yanked the tub off, and threw it back into the room whence I'd come. It crumpled one of the metal supports in the opposing wall, and part of the ceiling started to come down. I exited the room without opening the door I traversed and glanced down the short hallway in either direction. Bunches of servants, minor nobles, and members of the soldiery stared at me in shock.

Naked, soaking wet, and breaking walls, that was to be expected. I picked a direction at random and ran away. When people weren't getting out of my way fast enough I grabbed a porcelain vase and dumped the water lilies out of it. It was about a foot and a half tall, with an opening wide enough to allow my hand to pass. I reached in, grabbed my blade from Elsewhere, and yanked the large weapon out, shattering the diminutive vase as I did. Now people dove out of my way. Wet, naked, and crazy is one thing, but wet, naked, crazy, and armed gets results.

For no particular reasons I screamed pro-Realm slogans as I fled through the mansion, wantonly breaking valuables as I searched for a way out. Occasionally I stole things. Lookshy and the Realm were ancient rivals, and most citizens of one considered the continued breathing of the others a personal insult. The three Terrestrials were on my tail soon enough, gathering their allies as they chased me through twisting corridors. House Haid must have been designed by a frustrated labyrinth architect for the corridors twisted back on themselves, and once I'd set a few on fire, it was nearly impossible to tell them apart. Ultimately I found a stairway and went up until only a ceiling stopped my continued ascent. A lack of stairs helped. I jumped upwards, cut a hole in the slate roof, and pulled myself through.

I was standing near the center of the sweeping manse. It covered several acres of prime, inner city property. The roof rose and fell around me, smoke billowing from various windows, and beyond that were the modest grounds that abutted the estate's walls. Temporarily concealed by the billowing smoke, I raced to the edge of the building, hurled myself from the rooftop, and sailed over the wall into the bushes of a flower garden.

It was a rose garden. I was still naked.

That felt like you would expect. I darted across the yard, hopped that fence, and got to the rooftops. Once I'd put some distance between myself and the plume of smoke that marked my last location, I went looking for an alley. I still had a bag of miscellaneous shiny things I'd stolen from Haid, and needed an unscrupulous type to exchange them for clothing. When I found one, he was in the act of divesting someone else of their own shiny things. Once I put him to sleep, I stripped his clothes off. The victim of the mugging was beginning to come to at this point.

Fortunately, I was fully clad by the time she finished waking up. My blade had vanished back into Elsewhere, where it would not encumber me or draw attention. Seeing opportunity, I took her by the arm and assisted her upright and into the street. She insisted a few times that she was fine without my help, but her words proved empty of meaning. A large purple bruise was rising behind her ear, roughly the size of a fist-sized rock. Her balance was gone, and only with help could she remain upright.

"I'm fine; you don't need to help me," she insisted again.

"Ma'am, I've been hit in the head like that a few times," I told her. "Trust me, you aren't fine. Please, let me help you. I'd feel better about it."

"Ugh. My mother will never believe I can take care of myself if I need a stranger to help me home," she complained.

"I'd say the first step to avoiding that is not getting clubbed with a rock," I told her calmly. Several police rushed past, heading north towards the richer districts. I watched them from my peripheral vision. "Once you've messed up that step, I think the battle is more or less lost."

She thought about that for a second. Her wits were visibly returning to her in the wake of the sudden flirtation with violent unconsciousness. Her demeanor calmed, and she lost the agitation she'd had before. It was entirely possible she had a concussion, but I couldn't tell.

"Well, that's true," she admitted. "Thank you, by the way. For your help."

"You're welcome," I demurred. I wanted to dismiss the thanks, but I gathered she didn't like being helped to begin with. Besides, my motives were certainly ulterior. It felt cheap to take credit for them.

Along the way I learned her name was Salatian and that she worked as a clockmaker. She was somewhere between poor and middle class, in the region of junior enlisted soldiers and school teachers. Perhaps five and a half feet tall, with black hair that went just below her shoulders, she was as southern as the desert sun. Her skin was the color of burnished copper, and her eyes were very dark brown. Her fingers were tiny and given to gesturing as she talked. She wore brown divided skirts with a leather apron over a white cotton top. It was indistinguishable from the worker's clothing of half the city.

She explained to me that she had been picking up metal gears from a bronze smith who made them for her. The tiny pieces looked like coins from a distance and could easily be confused for gold from a cursory glance. They also clinked like money. Salatian explained she'd often worried that someone would misconstrue their nature and try to rob her for the faux gold. This had simply been the day she'd been dreading.

"I hope none of them are broken. The little metal work is expensive," she explained as we walked. "Some of the smaller gears aren't solid, being nothing but toothed rings with spokes to the central hub. Those will bend even when manipulated by tweezers." As she talked she pantomimed both gears and their bending. I had an arm around her back to her waist, and she unconsciously drew away from me. However her balance had not returned to the point where she could walk unaided, and a slight irregularity in the cobblestone road tipped her so she fell against my side. Again she reluctantly accepted my aid and walked the rest of the way leaning on me.

"Can they be fixed?" I asked. "Or do you need to return to the smith?"

"Once they're cast, I can modify them as necessary. The problem is the casting. It isn't difficult, but the molds are terribly expensive, and until business gets much busier, there's no point in doing it myself," she explained.

I nodded. More soldiers rushed past. No one glanced at us. I kept asking open ended questions to keep her talking while I looked around. That also gave me a chance to make sure she remained coherent. By the time we got to a small, iron bound door, I was certain she didn't have any cranial trauma sleeping wouldn't cure. Here the road was named Weft Street, and it had many small workshops. The houses leaned forward as if to jump at each other over the sidewalk.

"This is where I live," she said at the door. "My shop is downstairs, and my mother lives upstairs. My dad used to work with me, but his heart gave out last year."

That seemed an oddly personal detail, and I doubted she would have let it drop except for the recent head wound. That does make some people talkative.

"Thank you for seeing me home. Is there anything I can do for you?" she implored me.

There was no concealing the urgency of the request. She really wanted to do something so she hadn't been totally at the mercy of a random stranger. More soldiers were coming down the street. I didn't want to be seen by them.

"Lunch?" I asked.

She smiled. "Certainly. Come in," she paused. "Oh, I'm sorry, what was your name?"

"Crimson," I lied. "Crimson Wing."

"What an odd name," she said, tactlessly. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"Miss Salatian, I'm from a very long way away."


	3. Chapter 3

That night I scoured the seedier parts of Lookshy for a dealer in stolen goods. Nothing I'd stolen was directly traceable, but that didn't mean I wanted to sit on the problem. Without too much difficulty I found someone willing to take them off my hands. After that I found a common house and slept in the public room.

By this point rumors of my morning activities had grown, twisted, and mutated into things nearly unrecognizable. Teams of Dynastic warrior-assassins had broken into the Haid estate for insufferable insults against the Blessed Isle. It was the first stroke in an impending war. The army was mobilizing. A rain of kittens and squid was the direct result of the Goddess Ro Thas's anger at the insult to her high priest, one of Haid's kinsmen. Naked swordsmen were falling into rose gardens all over the city.

In the morning I found a gambling hall, and watched a game until I figured out how it was rigged and in who's benefit. After that I bet on him and let my small pile of winnings accumulate. Once I had enough that no single coin from the fence remained in my possession yet my funds were significantly greater, I left. I changed my clothes, cut my hair, and developed a new accent. That took most of the day. I ate again and waited for night to fall.

Not being a fool, I had slipped a hot knife behind Wood Elm's seal and opened the letter during my long travel here. The letter itself was innocent, consisting of an explanation of how the archivist had met me, what I wanted, and that under the deceased archivist's impression, I was a trustworthy individual. There had been nothing along the lines of, "He is the one. Get him!" Of course, if the mysterious booted individual had remained in Sijan, he could have discovered my actions. From thence it would have been a simple undertaking to send a messenger ahead on a fast horse.

This left me with additional questions. Who had conspired to frame me for murder? Under what intent had it been done? Honestly, my errand was innocuous. It had also been given to me under conditions that didn't bear public knowledge. I didn't see how a hostile party would learn of it, or even who would be hostile to such a benign intent as to help the nameless ghost's estranged family.

It was always possible that this had nothing to do with my errand, I chastised myself. Someone had done bad things to Wood Elm and wanted to do bad things to me. That was the mark of a bad person, and I had make a vocation of stopping such people. A little nonplussed at my unexpected adversary's vehemence, I sat in a small military cafe where young soldiers drank and tried their luck on the staff as the shadows lengthened into evening. While the longitudinal direction of the wide roads husbanded the dimming light, in the businesses beside the dark came creeping out of cupboards and basements as night came to exchange its brief words with day. Then the sun set, and the evening consolidated its hold on the city.

I paid my modest tab, tipped generously, and set out across the city. Vast cavern mouths lead down into the catacombs where the partially functional but barely understood cathedral-workshops of the First Age lurked. Either they came alive at night or the ebb of the day's crowds ceased to camouflage their noises, for now the city pulsed with faint thumbing noises that ground up between the flagstones of the road to hint at the strange secrets below. Usually the roads down were surrounded by great walled academies or military garrisons.

In the northern part of the city, near where the walls opened up on the river, were the large houses of the city's moderately rich. The truly affluent were more to the south. That was where the five great houses of Lookshy, the Gens of the Seventh Legion, had their manses. Haid was not nearly powerful enough to be in their number however. His manse stood near the obdurate mass of the riverward wall.

It hadn't burned down. In fact the fires had done little but leave smoke stains on the white granite. The oceanic mosaic on the walls was unbroken, but soot had left black marks all over it. An oil slick marred the vista. No other damage showed from the outside. Guards ringed the building, watching the roads carefully. Smiling to myself, I crept into a courtyard of the estate behind, and made my way from tree to tree until I overlooked the outside wall.

Soon deep twilight gripped the yard, yet it was still too early for the guards' eyes to have fully adapted to the night. I hurled myself into Haid's back yard, rolled, and darted through an open window.

The room beyond stank. Something had been stored in here, dyed woolens perhaps, that had been consumed by fire with a retched smell that still permeated walls. No sooner was I within than my eyes started watering and nostrils burned. I stopped breathing, crept to the door and listened carefully. When I heard silence I moved on.

The hallway was broad and long. One direction lead to a central hall I'd passed through briefly before being introduced to Lord Haid the first time. In it all the Dragon-Blooded scions of the house and those mortals in positions of esteem were eating together at a raised, central table. Around the outside were smaller tables for children and poorer relations. They ate from porcelain plates with silver utensils instead of gold and crystal, but the food was the same. A roast course was just being served, and most of the wine glasses were still half full. I stole away the other direction.

Again the labyrinthine nature of the place tried to confound me. Had the western library not been huge it would have been nearly impossible to find. Ultimately it was mostly by luck that I made my way in.

The house I killed Lemora in would have fit comfortably within that single room. The ceiling was sixty feet from the floor, decorated in elaborate depictions of the armies of Lookshy's conquests. On every wall shelves full of books, scrolls, and objects of historical significance rose to that lofty ceiling, ringed periodically with catwalks and floors that no place required a ladder to reach. Wide placards denoted the divisions of the books within, and without exception all were military. Logistics, Tactics, Strategy, and Arms ringed the first floor. Above them the second level was devoted entirely to the Realm. Above that were sections on every major nation in Creation, and above that were the histories. I scrambled up to that high catwalk and started my search.

These books clearly showed frequent reference. Several alcoves dotted the walls where desks were filled with recent work. Haid's uncles who worked on their historical treatise had been hard at work, and their efforts were meticulously categorized. It took no effort at all to find the records of Yvores Alson. It was a huge book, bound in leather and iron, with bronze filigree on the cover. Excited I yanked it off the shelf and cracked it open.

Half the pages were missing. Right in the center of the volume, they had been cut out, excised from the biding with a sharp knife. I stared at the absence with irritation, before flipping to the back, looking for an index. That had also been removed. Seething, I went to the front, looking for a table of contents. Unsurprisingly that was gone. Annoyed I slid the censored volume back into place and lapsed into thought.

My ruminations were interrupted by voices below. Dinner had ended, and the scholars were returning to their labors for the evening. Their dedication was unimpeachable. I dashed into an unlit corner, bounded upwards to grab the next level's catwalk and pulled myself up. Now I was on the top level, devoted to specific manuals on repair and maintenance for every piece of equipment the Seventh Legion had issued it's rank and file soldiers in its approximately fifteen hundred year history. These scholars were nothing if not thorough. I retreated into an alcove thick with dust.

"Anything we can do for you tonight?" asked a young woman. Her voice was polite and eager to please.

"Same as usual," replied an older man with amused tolerance. "Try to keep the noise to a minimum."

"Have we been bothering you?" she asked, abashed.

"Yes!" snapped a second elderly voice.

"No," countered the first one. "You're fine."

"You could guard us from outside," suggested the peevish old man.

"Sorry, sir. Orders," demurred the young woman. "We would if we could."

"Bah." If footsteps could sound annoyed, those would.

That more or less ended the conversation below. Three sets of footsteps, slow and careful, ascended a circular iron wrought staircase until they were on the fourth floor, the level of the histories. Meanwhile four chairs were pulled out from a table below, and cards were shuffled. I filtered those into the background as I focused on the three gentlemen below me. By the sound of it, they entered the alcove directly below the one I was hiding in, and set to work. I heard pens scratch on paper.

"Waste of time," muttered the peevish voice. "A distraction too. I can barely work with the sounds of their card playing all day."

"Stop complaining, you old goat. You're so deaf you couldn't hear their card playing if they dealt on your bald head," retorted a new voice. This one was older than either other, and sounded tired.

"I can hear a mouse fart a hundred yards away!" snapped the first voice.

"Fifty years ago you might have," countered the older one. "Now you're a post."

"Still a bloody waste of time," grumbled the peevish one. "Like that Stark Vision chap is going to be hiding behind the animal husbandry manuals with assassination on his mind." Curiously I glanced at the book spines on my right. _Proper Horse Care for Cavalry _read old script. I shrugged. "Haid should have his people looking for whoever broke in a ruined that book."

The old man who'd been nice to the guards sighed wearily. The other one rose to the bait. "You still think they're two separate assassins? Or that someone hired a veteran thief just to vandalize a book no one but us even knows exists?" His voice was scornful.

"It makes more sense than that Stark lad breaking in to ruin it and then coming back," the peevish one snapped. "Or do you think that while Haid was chasing him he evaded him, crept in here, found the book, precisely cut away the chapters on the Reprieve Operations, and then left without another trace?"

That was one question answered.

"So you think there is a second thief. Like the only thing the criminal element has on their minds is the ruination of historical documents? Because I'm sure that Mongo the Murderer is going to stop mugging his way across the world to indulge his secret hobby of revisionist history." The oldest one snorted, contemptuously.

Under his breath the nice one murmured "I'm so glad that those four guards aren't disturbing my work with their pointless bickering. That would be quite annoying."

"What was that?" snapped the grumpy one, the one who could hear a mouse fart fifty yards away.

"Nothing," the other replied innocently. "I'm trying to find the second reference Horatius Brus made to wheat requisitions in the spring of BY Four. I want to see if that corresponds to the inventories of the Nexus Expedition."

"Still think Brus headed that operation?" the oldest on asked, diverted.

"It would explain the use of the Arraka gambit on the fourth day of the battle of Guern," he replied.

Their bickering stopped as they worked mutely, presumably following this new line of inquiry. The library was silent except for paper rustling and the dealing of cards. In the silence, there was a soft spoken "Four," from the table on the first floor.

"Stop that infernal racket!" screeched the grumpy one.

Card noises stopped. In the sudden stillness, I lost the sound of the old one's breathing. The sudden cry must have startled him halfway to death.

"Impossible to get any work done with all that noise," the screecher grumbled. "Damn kids and their cards playing."

"Olber, if I die, I'm taking you with me," swore the archivist who had nearly just experience cardiac arrest. He had just started breathing again.

"What are you blathering about, you senile goat?"

"I suddenly remember that I still have the notes I took when I wrote those passages from Yvores' accounts," mentioned the kind one. His voice sounded very tense. "I think I'll go see if I can find them."

There were moving noises, and then one set of footsteps going down. At the floor he asked the guards if they wanted to accompany him, and all four leaped to their feet. Soon the two old men were alone with their work.

"Finally, they're gone," said the grumpy one with a sigh of relief.

"Thanks to you! Now we have no one to protect us in case that Stark lunatic is lurking around here," the other snapped.

"Like that will happen!"

They descended immediately into bickering. I rose to my feet and crept to the catwalk balustrade. There was no one below but the two distracted men in their alcove. They were in plain sight of the spiraling stair. I took firm grip of the railing and then silently heaved myself over. Along the way I caught a brief glimpse of the them, frozen in an instant of quarreling, before I was past. They looked every bit as old and crotchety as they sounded. I plummeted down to the floor below them and snagged the iron catwalk. It didn't even creak as it arrested my fall. Then I dropped down to the thick rugs of the ground, and peered outside.

Old and friendly was walking away from me with all four soldiers at his back. I stole into the hallway behind them. It was well past nightfall, and the candles had mostly been extinguished. Only a few still burned in iron settings to light the halls. The archivist and his four guards threw long shadows.

"Now that we're out of there would any of you care to join me for a drink?" offered the old man. "My old nerves could do for a bit of soothing."

"Sir, we would be remiss in our duties if we did not accompany you wherever you might lead," the young woman replied seriously. The other three all agreed with great dedication.

"Excellent. Stay here a moment, and then we'll nip down to the kitchen."

The old man entered a side door, and the five of us in the hallway waited patiently. Soon he returned with a sheaf of papers. From there the party went to the kitchen. The old man put his papers down on a table before joining the other four for a drink. Soon the conversation dovetailed to the bizarre personal habits of the other two archivists, and no one was paying any attention to the notes.

One of the side effects of being a magician is a certain aptitude to thievery. I made a beckoning gesture to the paperwork, and they vanished to reappear in my hands. Simply taking them and running seemed disrespectful to the one man who hadn't deserved it, but there was no time to read them there. Instead I pulled up my pants and using the old man's pen, which I had also stolen, transcripted the documents onto my leg with the blinding speed of magic. A final flickering gesture send the papers back, and I exited the mansion in much the same way I'd come.

Half a dozen blocks away I went to an ale house and acquired a private booth in the back. Once the barmaid came I impressed her with my desire to drink alone, and my willingness to tip for the privilege, and soon devoted myself to the study of ancient lore scrawled across my thigh. I neither know nor care what she must have thought upon returning with my refill, and finding me so occupied. She didn't say, and I didn't ask.

My knowledge of history is mostly devoted to the great ancient evils who've plagued the world, and the forbidden powers they worship. At the risk of sounding immodest, I posses a near encyclopedic mastery of the exploits of ancient demons and know the names of most, if not all, the forbidden gods. Military history, unfortunately, is not my strong suit. I know there are militaries, there have been militaries, and can say with confidence they usually tried to stick swords in their enemies. Furthermore, the trick seemed to be preventing those enemies from doing the same to them.

The area of overlap between these nearly discrete fields of lore lay with the Fair Folk. The fae I've met and fought on a dozen occasions across the known world. They're beautiful and terrible, like watery mirages in the desert. With no connection to human definitions of sanity, they are still quite distinct from being mad. As mentioned, during the Balorian Crusade they invaded Creation en mass, intent on wiping the stain of ordered life from the pure madness of the Wyld. They also very nearly succeeded.

According to old Werzan's notes, which he labeled quite clearly, the Reprieve was undertaken when it became known that in the nearly unresisted initial blitzkrieg of their assault, the fae had pursued the fleeing Shogunate army with such abandon they had completely missed great chunks of creation that had lacked the capacity to put up a noteworthy resistance. Ninety seven mortals and sixteen Dragon-Blooded had dashed madly into the Wyld in the direction of Aphor. They'd arrived and were organizing the populace to flee when they'd sent a messenger back to tell their commander of their success. That messenger had been captured by the fae and had revealed all before they killed him. Yvores Alson had been taunted with the knowledge of the mad bravery of this effort. Ultimately it had been pointless, for Fair Folk nobles had severed the ties of geomancy that had linked the isolated kingdom to the reality affirming Poles of Creation, and let the region sink into the pure wyld. The noble who'd captured the historian taunted him with stories of unleashing his hordes on the humans and their ineffective guardians, and eating their souls with delight.

But Yvores never mentioned being confronted with truth of this final claim. That Aphor fell into the wyld is beyond doubt. Yet years later, when his freedom was won from the fae in a game of chance, Yvores insisted that the noble had never actually shown him evidence that the hundred men and almost score Dragon-Bloods were dead. It had been left uncertain, that that question might haunt him to his death. That mystery, and ones like it, had been what ultimately drove Alvores mad.

That matched up well with my knowledge of the fae. They lied in abundance and delighted in falsehood. It was what made their illusions so potent. If the ghost's fetters still bound him to the world, which only made sense, then some member of his household still breathed. Still, the old ghost had died years before the Balorian Crusade. He recalled seeing generations of his family reside in the home he'd protected. Thus some stray child could have left and wound up safe in Creation while all who lived in the land of their fathers had died, as the fae had declared.

There was no way to tell. Knowing nothing, not even a name, I couldn't go to any oracles. My own sorcery required more fuel then I had to feed it. Asking the Fair Folk was pointless. I had nothing.

That actually made things quite a bit simpler. I finished my beer, paid my tab, and left. As I walked out the door I noticed the bartender and the server talking together in low tones with heads bent close. They stopped as I went by and watched me. Grinning, I waved and sent them a manic grin. Then I left.

The people of Lookshy were a secular people. They believed in the force of arms, and the works of their minds. This did not mean they were without temples and had forsaken the gods. There were temples to all the gods one could expect in the religious districts. In the heart of the old part of the city stood the great Obelisk of Triumphant Divinities. Leave it to Looksy to only patronize gods who won their conflicts. The obelisk itself was a gold pillar a couple hundred feet tall, emblazoned with bas reliefs of the gods who had earned the worship of the people of the city through force of arms. I found the role reversal terribly amusing. Around the base were the private chapels of individual gods, while the gigantic mass of it, older than the city itself, towered above even the distant hilltop palaces of the great Gens. Now, close to midnight, the throngs of the day were gone. There were still people around, but not many.

When no one seemed to be paying too much attention to me, I jumped. I admit, I cheated.

Magic, if you want to use that incredibly inaccurate term, can be broken into two broad groups. (Technically, this isn't true, but nothing I'm going to say is in the strictest sense.) Sorcery falls into one group, while Charm use falls into the other. Sorcery is what most people consider magic. If you want to turn a river to blood or summon a demon, you do that with sorcery. It's powerful, flashy, and draining. Charms are simpler. They're barely even magic, being more of mildly supernatural tricks at the most basic level. The two don't interact much. When I counter-spelled the soulstone vortex in Lemora's demesne, that was sorcery. When I augmented my legs with essence until three hundred feet was well within leaping distance, that was a charm.

Once I'd landed on top of the pillar to victorious gods, I poked around for a while. The summit wasn't featureless. Instead there was a small amphitheater and on what might be considered the stage was a altar, unused for since the ending of the last age of man. Outside the amphitheater, facing inward, were three majestic lions of sandstone, each a dozen feet tall. They looked perfectly lifelike and faced the center stage with immobile anticipation. I had never been here, but reading up on the fleshharrowing golems of Miridas Ker had told me what to expect. This was where the mad god-kings of old had worshiped those few beings they considered greater than themselves until arrogance had turned them blind to any power other than their own.

Conceit had seeped into the stone. Even without carvings or inscriptions that boasted of unsurpassed power, the nature of the place reminded me of the old lords of creation. Some trace of that old self absorption had permeated the entire monolith, manifesting itself as the tacit assumption that the gods had to prove their worth for worship in this city. If the will of the old god-kings had not been so puissant that even now, an age after them were gone, their magics had not anchored this plinth to existence and rendered it inviolate I'm sure some deity would have contrived a 'natural' disaster to bring this edifice of hubris down. That would have irritated the piss out of me, because what I wanted was up here, and it was hard enough to get to with the platform. Yet millenia had barely eroded their ancient works. Their hubris might have been madness, but it was grounded in power.

Back to my previous discussion of magic, suppose one wanted to open a locked door. Were one unaccustomed to the existence of locks and keys, the key could be considered magic. Similarly, were one never able to conceive of kicking a door open, you might similarly consider such an action supernatural. I've got Charms that will do either of those two things quite effectively without requiring a key like the former or being as obvious as later. While they transcend some of the limits of those methods, they are still bound by them, and thus require the door to have a key hole, or a frame and hinges.

Sorcery, on the other hand, obeys by no such rules. Sorcery is like a great obscene gesture raised to the laws of heaven and earth that spits on the natural order before battering it aside with raw power. As you might imagine, the mad god-kings of old were quite fond of it. It suited their arrogance. I consider it a necessary evil. Quite simply, the door I wanted open wasn't actually there. Charms of passing would let me walk through empty air quite easily, but wouldn't open invisible nonexistent doors. I wanted that empty air to take me someplace else, so I took a club of pure essence and smacked the laws of location with it until they clattered aside. Dovetails of arcane might fell of the broken constructions of the world as the nothingness parted, and then opened and a portal blazed into being.

The crowd below much have thought they were in the presence of a miracle. They sort of were, but really weren't. For all my power, I'm not beginning to claim divine status.

As the spiritual doorway broached down the center, there was a sudden radiance of iridescent light that bathed me. It was warm and glorious, and filled the night sky. I bowed very low, not out of obligation, but respect.

"Sun-Child," breathed a deep voice. It was at once perfectly clear, and yet had undertones of great felines roaring as they brought down their serengeti prey. "You had better have good reasons for this."

Turning, I faced the three sculpted cats, who were now looking down at me from golden eyes. The false appearance of sandstone had fallen away, revealing mobile orichalcum, distilled gold, that flowed like fur over impossibly powerful muscles. If my actions had smelled of the supernatural, their very existence radiated it.

"I'd like to speak with a god," I said respectfully.

"Go to a temple," the vast beast on my right suggested. Its words displayed tremendous fangs, and the cat shook it's mane at me threateningly.

"The god I desire an audience with has no temples," I explained. "His people are no more, and his worship has fallen from the customs of man. Even the lands that bore his nation have disappeared into the risen tide of the Wyld eight centuries past. I would speak to the defunct god of Aphor, kingdom by the banks of Mer."

The lions considered me in silence, letting the night winds ruffle their fur. Though metal, it moved like real hair, and coruscated brilliantly with its own light.

"Heaven is closed to you, Sun-Child. Destiny forbids it." This was said by the central lion, but there was no meaningful difference between them besides location. Each was the image of the other, and alike in act and thought.

"Access to Heaven is my right," I pointed out. "And no power less lofty than the Unconquered Sun himself, who is my patron, may bar my access. I come in peace and on due business with a resident."

There was an uncomfortable silence for this was true. Finally one answered me, "Sun-Child, at one time that was beyond reproach, yet your kind have not been here since you went mad in the Last Age. Times have moved on, and your kind no longer rule Creation as you have never ruled Yu Shan. Customs have changed, and customs give rise to law. Would you risk violating the peace of Yu Shan?"

"I have spoken nothing but the truth, and shall undergo any test you would care to name to prove it. Even were this not the case, my authority bows to no law less potent than the words of the most high. Even Destiny is beholden to him." Again, this was true.

"Sun-Child, what do you want with a defunct god that you would endanger the peace of heaven?" the great lion asked. It was concerned. True, legally speaking I was beyond reproach, but the lion knew well that Destiny ruled matters now.

"What matter is it to you? Would you bear a message for me, that I might not enter Yu Shan myself, and thus not risk a conflict with Destiny?" I asked. Amazing how subtle I'm not, aren't I?

"We will undertake no errand that risks the laws of heaven," a lion replied, cautioning me.

"Would you tell the God of Aphor that I seek the remnant of his people, to do service to them as I have been beseeched by a ghost of one of his children? I would know if any yet live within Creation, and desire his help. If he accedes, I may be found by the Plaza of Voices Raised in Song at midnight of each day."

The lions considered this. Their feline expressions are naturally haughty, yet some instinct told me that they were considering my request only in their own defense. Bearing a message to a minor god was undignified, yet it avoided any number of conflicts.

"One of our number will undertake such a thing," one of the guardians replied. "But only if you make no further attempt to enter this place."

"I will make no further attempt to enter on this purpose," I added the stricture carefully. I had no intention of willingly exiling myself from anywhere, much less Heaven, regardless of whether or not I'd ever been there before. "But only should you assure me you will bear no tidings of this to Destiny, nor let their agents learn of this though any direct efforts of yours."

"That is agreed." the great cat replied. At once one of the three passed through the gateway, to be instantly replaced by an identical construct. It took the place of the missing guardian as if it had ever been there. "Now release your geas on this portal."

"Certainly," I replied. "But before I do, there is one further thing."

"What?" retorted the lion. All three of them leaned forward menacingly, waiting for this last bit of trickery.

"Thank you," I said graciously and ended the spell. The portal vanished as if it had never been, and the night sank into darkness. As it vanished the celestial guards returned to their immobile pose, and settled into sandstone stillness. The sheen of metal more precious than gold vanished from their coats, leaving only old stone. For a long time I waited, as the after effects of the word of opening ended. Radiant essence ceased to rippled the air or exude from my skin. Then I bowed to the silent guardians and leaped from the pillar as I had come.

I landed in an alley some distance away. A crowd was collecting, moving towards the great obelisk, as wonder reached through the jaded hearts of a secular people. Smiling affably I moved away from them and left that environ.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day I waited. During the morning I looked in on the clockmaker Salation. She was performing wonders with brass and bronze, creating intricate mechanisms of chronometry. I felt guilty for my lies of omission, and sat with her for an hour as she worked, listening to her talk of the city and its people. Bent over a small carving of a bird, she rarely looked up at me. Instead she was assembling piece by piece the mechanism with long tweezers via its mouth, the only orifice into the hollow animal's central cavity. When it was completed, she explained, a tiny bell would ring the hours like the bird was chirping. It should sell well.

I watched her work in by the window where the morning sun fell on her hair as it tumbled down around her head. Her skin was so dark red that the copper pieces were indistinct from her hands. Only the tiny, dexterous motions of her fingers told me of the difference. She was obviously embarrassed by the unconscious gestures that followed her every spoken sentence, and stopped it by focusing that energy on a concrete task. Even while she spoke on unrelated things, her powers of concentration were amazing. No detail of the construction escaped her, or failed to present itself to her mind when she needed it.

In the afternoon I found a criminal and mugged him. He was endeavoring to do the same to someone else when I caught him, which was indeed what gave me the idea. I fleeced him thoroughly and left him bound in the alley behind a police station. From there I joined a dice game and exchanged all of his money for half its value in new coins. That money I passed in various establishments across the city, listening to the rumors of Gens Haid. (Nothing beat the rain of kittens and squid for implausibility, but the plague omnivorous dire-hamsters filled my heart with joy. I made sure to encourage that one.)

The Plaza of Voices Raised in Song is filled during most of the day with choirs, and the perpetual mood of celebration is so infectious that even the citizens frequently find themselves bursting into lyricism. I'd heard of it before, and took the opportunity to investigate it during the day. Finding nothing magical, I was struck by the way the light refracted through carefully placed prisms in the walls, and the soothing sound of water in the fountains. Excellent architecture flowed in conjunction with the area's natural geomancy. Sunlight filled the courtyard. After the sun set, the mood vanished, and the oddly built area generated a feel of incompleteness that the civilians found disquieting. Not long after nightfall it was empty, as rumors had told me it would be.

The night was long and cold. Autumn was passing, and winter waved fondly from the near future. No gods appeared. After the appointed time was gone I retreated to a common house and slept almost until noon.

My next week passed in much the same manner. I took to offering the various criminals their freedom in exchange for an oath of just living, which I sealed with power. This didn't bother my sense of morality at all. There was no magic that actually compelled them to obey their oaths. Instead I wrapped a knot of bad luck in their aura's and tied it to the condition they forsook our covenant. The lack of unnatural mental influence proved manifest in a rash of police arrests, as criminals became entrapped by the oddest string of coincidences. Eventually word began to spread around the underworld, and the hoodlums I apprehended started vowing like they meant it.

Salation completed her cuckoo clock and started to work on a series of smaller, less complex pieces she could turn out several of per day. They were resilient and well suited for life on the road, ideal for soldiers. They went quickly, and she explained that most of her business revolved around such items. In Lookshy, selling to the legions meant success. I started forcing myself to avoid her in the evenings that I would not monopolize her time. She had other things to do than talk to me. During the afternoons I accompanied her regularly and would walk with her to and from the metal smith who cast her gears. No one bothered us, though I think I recognized a few of the people who watched us from the shadows.

Then one midnight my divinity appeared. I was sitting by the sparkling fountains of the plaza, listening to their chorus. Deprived of the complement of light and people, the sound was terribly lonely and afraid, but within it was still the remnant of the days light. Without warning the foam suddenly parted in the shaped of a breaching face. He rose until his head and shoulders were lifted from the water forming an aqueous body that dribbled around the edges like the back side of a waterfall. His hair and beard were unkempt and scraggly, bespeaking privation. His nose was hooked fiercely. Most disturbing of all were his eyes, dim with despair, and yet within them shone a desperate madness.

"Welcome to Lookshy, divine one," I greeted him politely, sitting straighter in my chair.

"Do you not do me reverence, mortal?" the god replied. His voice was like his eyes, broken with age, but possessed of a sudden terrible hope.

"It is not for you to be worshiped by me," I pointed out archly. "But if you are who I think you are, I hope to return to you worshipers in plenty. I am Stark Vision of Inevitability. Thank you for coming."

The god considered me. He looked torn that I was giving him no obeisance, yet desperate for what I offered. I've seen the same look in the addicts of the east. "Temerity, mortal. But I will accept that if you make good your promises. I am Rush the Falling Water. I was king of the Mer once, and will be so again."

"First, I'm promising you nothing," I interjected. One has to be firm with these gods. "I promised a ghost who I think worshiped you in life to help his kin, and if you help me in that it may help you in turn. But I'm undertaking no covenant with you. Secondly, I've not been mortal in a very long time. If you intend to come here mouthing proclamations and commandments and providing no material support as you have done in the past, we will have nothing to discuss."

The old god looked at me and sighed. His broken form sank down into itself, and he retreated partially into the water. Only his shoulders and head were above it now, and the demarcation between his flowing beard and the equally flowing water was indistinct. "Very well. The Lions told me you were a Sun-Child. A crowned disk. Is that true?"

"It is," I replied. "Now, do you know this man?" With that I drew my fingers through the air like spreading an invisible cats cradle, but caught threads of essence between them. As I pulled them apart the threads shaped the form of the old ghost, creating a perfect bust of his image. (This isn't the sort of thing one can show an old librarian without sudden accusations of witchcraft. Try it some time if you don't believe me.)

Rush the Falling Water considered him carefully, searching his old, deprived memory for the face. To aid him I also conjured the image of the old ghost's halcyon recollection of his own youth, and held them side by side. The divinity thought briefly.

"He bears the resemblance of my people. He is familiar, and yet I do not recall this one personally."

"He was a farmer. As he died he allowed a soul entanglement to put him in a medallion that warded his family from a pox," I supplied.

"I don't recall," the old god admitted quietly. Admitting defeat shamed him. I nodded and let the image vanish. Rush the Falling Water must have thought that meant I was about to leave, for he suddenly said, "But I can find out! We have records of such things, records with names and faces. My stature isn't what it was, but I still have some influence. They will help me search the records if I ask."

"That will be helpful," I agreed.

"Do any of his kin still live?" asked the god, hungrily.

"That's what I want you to find out," I replied.

"You don't know!" it wailed.

I took a hurried glance around the courtyard. No one was looking.

"Of course not. I don't even know who he is. Didn't any of your people leave Aphor before it fell to the fae?" I hissed at the anguished god.

"None survived!" he lamented. "My people were a close group, and I sheltered them and cared for their every want. Only few ever left, but every single one died in the great Contagion that swept Creation."

That would be a problem. It might end my labors, but not the way I'd hoped. "What about the rescue mission, Operation Reprieve? Did that succeed?"

"I don't know. When the Contagion swept through, I hastened to aid my wayward children. Aphor itself is a small kingdom, with little contact with the outside world, and through seclusion alone I thought it might endure. But the sickness proved greater than my skills, and while I was so distracted, the wyld plunged my home and fiefdom into chaos. Now I have nothing."

"But did anyone survive? Deep in the wyld, but sheltered by the Dragon-Blooded, perhaps?"

"If they do, they did so far beyond the purvey of fate and destiny. I cannot know."

I pondered again. "Go to your people. Find out the old ghost's name, his family, the names of his children, anything you can. Contact me here in this manner when you have that."

"Do you mean to order me about, Sun-Child?" asked the old god, remembering a bit of his pride.

"Yes," I responded easily. "And if you are wise, you'll use your energies helping me instead of being insulted by my hubris. Remember, Rush the Falling Water, you have much to gain if I succeed, and nothing left to lose."

"I am not destitute," he retorted, full of injured pride. "Though I do not have my previous esteem, I still have meaning. I ward irrigation ditches between bean fields now, and the Immaculate Order pays me due respect for my efforts."

I stared at him blankly until the words had permeated my brain. Biting back sarcasm, I asked, "How's that working for you?"

Rush the Falling Water stared at me in just as serious a silence. "I shall go to the records at once," he concluded. With that he vanished, sinking into the fountain, and leaving me alone with the mournful sound of water, lonely for light.

I slept for a while, and then spent the afternoon with Salation. It occurred to me that if no one survived from Aphor, my promise to the ghost had been completed. Then I would have nothing to do, and nowhere to go. That thought stole into my head while I watched the clockmaker meticulously put gears and springs into another small, durable piece for a marching soldier. She soaked up the autumn sun, glowing with the subtle radiance of health. The shop was nice, quiet, and well made. We sat by the spreading bay windows, watching traffic on the streets below, and time rolled softly by.

When the sun began to dip towards the outer walls, I excused myself. Salation looked up from her work a little surprised.

"I had not realized it was this late. Would you like to stay for dinner?" she offered, glancing into the deepening gloom of the early evening.

"No, thank you." I demurred, much as I would have enjoyed it. "There is work to be done."

"There always is," she replied simply. "Will I see you again tomorrow?"

"If you want."

"I would."

"Then you will."

I smiled at her as her fingers twitched over the small lacquered clockface. The spring assembly lay in pieces around it, but the driving gears had been carefully interfaced. She'd probably have the whole thing done by tomorrow at noon. She smiled back, and I bowed to her as I let myself out. Lookshy's streets were never deserted, and the flow of pedestrians bore me away.

South to the halls of the great houses went the road and I with it. The current of people moved swiftly, and the level of worn wealth grew. Soon those who walked around me wore silks with gold and lace, while more rode well bred warhorses, some destriers. As the houses became manses of the rich and powerful, I became invisible as little more than an obstacle to traffic. This suited me fine.

Soon I left the major road and walked up a drive through a manicured yard. To my right was a vast house of Gens Maheka, a family of ancient origin, vast wealth, and renowned for martial arete. They were also recognized for devotion to the Immaculate Faith, and hosted small temples on many of their estates. To the other side of the short lane was one of these, less ornate but larger than many. Mahekan guards watched me, distrusting my common clothes and out of place rags, but said nothing as I walked purposefully into the temple and took a seat in the waiting area. It was empty except for me.

Not much later a middle aged monk appeared. He smiled at me, and I rose to bow in respect. Regardless of my opinions of his faith, he looked like a good man, humble and charitable as necessary. I will respect that even if I am less than fond of the Immaculate Doctrine.

"Good evening, my son. Welcome to the Temple of Elemental Fire," he said simply, and then murmured a silent benediction. It seemed reflexive from him, and confirmed my opinion he was a decent man. "I am Maheka Aresta, servant of the third coil."

"Thank you, reverend father. My name is Crimson Wing," I replied. He looked about sixty, which would have put me old enough to be his biological parent, but I obeyed the forms. "Thank you for allowing me in."

"The doors are open to all. What brings you here?"

"I'd like to speak to an exorcist."

"Oh?" he asked. The request was unusual, for normally the Dragon-Blooded dealt with rogue spirits themselves. Still, it was one of the duties of the faith, and I'd carefully picked this temple for I knew that several monks had retired here from that line of work in their vigorous youth. Retirement breeds boredom, and boredom breeds a willingness to help, even the poor. "Do you require a ghost expelled?" he asked seriously.

"No, I do not. But recently I met one, and have questions about things he said to me. I've come seeking guidance."

"Tell me about it," he replied, and sat down near me in the antechamber.

This was the tricky part. My friction with the Immaculates has its basis on their stance towards those with my unnatural youth. They call me Anathema, and regard me as a reincarnation of mad demons of old. While the old god kings who had built the temple of arrogance atop the Obelisk of Triumphant Divinities had certainly plunged into enough madness and cruelty to deserve what happened to them, the Immaculates consider that same end my righteous deserts as well, simply because of my connection to the old ones. My grasp of sorcery, my comparative immortality, and the old bargains that had let me negotiate with the celestial lions were all consequences of my connection. As such, I had to be very careful relating the events that transpired.

"Reverend father, I come from the far threshold, where under the training of an old and wise master, my eyes were opened to the spiritual world. Since my community is small and isolated, it fell to me to deal with the spirits and ghosts that inhabited this place." Absolutely none of that was true. But hopefully it would conceal the more divisive facts. "Not long ago I found an amulet within which was the spirit of an old man. He was incarcerated to protect the amulet's bearer. I liberated him, but he claimed that his children still lived and he was called to them. Yet as I searched, I believe his family died during the great Contagion. Could he be mistaken?"

Maheka Aresta scowled at me. He'd been scowling disapprovingly since I said I was able to observe the spiritual world. He hadn't interrupted me then, but now readdressed that topic. "The spiritual world is dark and mysterious. Someone without the dictates of the Immaculate Faith should not intervene with it."

"That is, of course, why I've come to you for guidance," I replied, placatingly. "My master was a student in Sijan, and while he learned much the ways of the dead there, he could not transmit to me the lore that you have. Thus I've come here for guidance."

"You should not be meddling in such things at all," he chided me. "Concern yourself not with affairs above your station. Let the representatives of the faith handle this."

"Then you'll send a monk out?" I asked, forcing hopefulness into my voice. "Our village has long hoped for a true religious presence, and I would like to lay down this burden."

"It can be done. Where is your village?"

"We're only a couple months walk up from Mist Island, where the Rock and Meander Rivers meet," I suppled helpfully. That had been where I'd lived before. From Lookshy, that would be about a year's travel for a normal man. Of course, there were no roads, the mosquitoes grew slightly larger than hummingbirds, and the last five hundred miles were mostly uphill.

The old monk considered that silently. "We may not be able to get there for a while," he admitted.

"That's what the monks of Rana told me," I sympathized. "They said they're waiting for the diphtheria to die down. Is there any way you could come earlier? I much dislike meddling with things beyond my ken."

"Our numbers are short. Do you desire to learn the ways of the spiritual world? You could take the vows and receive training yourself," he offered.

I visibly thought about it. "I don't know what my wife would say. Perhaps once the children are grown," I suggested.

"Oh." Stymied, he frowned. I hoped that put an end to all of that.

"But until then, do you think the ghost could be wrong, reverend father?"

"No, no, child. If the ghost is bound to his descendants, there is no chance he could be mistaken. Such things transcend death and fate. It may be true."

"Could he have been lying?" I asked.

"Possible. Was the ghost hostile?"

"No, actually it was very helpful. I've been forced to expel a few angry ghosts, sometimes with words and sometimes with salt and iron. This one had none of their semblance."

"Then it most likely spoke the truth," Maheka replied. We shared this in silence.

If Rush the Falling Water was correct about none of his children surviving the Contagion, that meant that some of the denizens of Aphor must have survived, cut off from Creation in the sea of the wyld. Even if they had forsaken their old god and abandoned his worship, that would not have left him deprived and destitute in heaven. Gods are capable in their own right, and guard that power jealously. Only the death of all his purvey within Creation would have accomplished his dire straits. Thus the remnants of Aphor must still exist, lost in the wyld.

"Tell me, father, is there any way to find them? The ghost had been lost from life so long he no longer remembered his name or kin, and when I revealed I could not find them he fled. Is there anyway to help him?"

"Only the ghost himself might. Otherwise, I know of nothing."

That was disappointing but expected. The ghost himself had suggested such an outcome. That did not change my stance on working with bound spirits. It was another of those slippery slopes I refused to take the first step down. No good came from relying on the dead to do your will, no matter the motivation, no matter the aim, no matter if the dead were willing or imploring to be used so. It only lead to destruction. At some point in the past the law of death had been broken, and the dead were no longer constrained from affecting the living. The worst problems that beset Creation now had their origin in that rupture.

"I see, reverend father. Thank you for your guidance."

"Tell me, son, these affairs have not taken you from the just practices of the Doctrines?" he asked, seriously.

"Oh, no, father. I've never been closer to the faith," I assured him.

"Good. Is there anything else you require?"

Something occurred to me. "One simple, unrelated question. Our farmers have been doing reverence to a few of the gods who aid them, but worry they are paying too much respect to one Rush the Falling Water. Can you tell me what his due feast days are?"

"That is an easy matter. It will be but a moment."

He rose and left, and I waited patiently. Soon he returned and said, "The fourth Moonsday of the month of Ascending Water is his feast, which he shares with all other minor bean gods. Do not give him more than his due, for it breeds jealousy in the gods. The Immaculate Dragons have ordained it thus."

I nodded sagaciously and took my leave of him. He watched me with a strict, but kind eye, as he sent me on my way with many stern warnings about meddling in powers I could not understand. Then from the porch he called to the guards of the Gens Maheka estates, and bid them ensure I made my way back to when I'd come with no problems.

He wasn't dismissing me. I believe he honestly worried I could not find my way without help. He was a kind old man, and did what he did because he thought it best for everyone, yet had little respect for those that differed from his opinions.

At its heart, that indeed was the nature of the entire Immaculate Faith. Much has been made of that religion, but many of its detractors forget that the core precepts of the faith are charity, humility, and an encouragement to leave the world a little better than one found it.. Those ideas are well encouraged. Unfortunately that got lost in the mad prosecution of Anathema. Mad indeed is the best term for it, for their persecution had grown to a kind of obsession, that twisted even the best of motivations to the same evil they sought to repress. Let the Wyld Hunt come after me, and the chips will fall where they may. But children have been Chosen of the Sun, and were found and executed by the assassins of the faith. That is unconscionable. It is the depths of a trough below a slope as treacherous as mental influence or necromancy, and serves as a warning I take careful notice of. Thus I get what good from the monks of the dragons I can, though I trust them little.

It was early evening. The sun was gone, yet some light remained in the sky. I wandered with no purpose northward, forgetting that ultimately the great avenue of the south twisted and turned until it became the small lane that passed before a certain clockmaker's shop. Unconsciously my feet carried me to her door. The hour was late when I arrived, and it was beyond visiting hours. I considered her house quietly. She was probably asleep or tending to her mother. For a long moment I stared at her house, then forced myself to leave. I turned away, and words from the shadows encouraged me along.

"Just keep walking, stranger. Be elsewhere."

On the porch of another house was a big man. He was looking down at me, frowning dangerously.

"Easy, friend," I said, trying to pitch my words softly. "I'm just traveling the road."

"Then travel it. I've watched that other one slink around that house, and now I'm watching you. Just keep moving."

_That other one?_ Without another wasted word I hastened down the street, found a back alley, lit to the rooftops and returned, staying deep in the shadows. The row of houses across the street offered the perfect place to watch Salation's shop, and the shadows of a chimney would conceal me perfectly. I dropped into the blackness and sprawled out. There was a comfortable place to sit and wait.

In fact, there was a remarkably comfortable place to sit. Stray had been pushed aside, and adjusted to form a natural perch. The rest of the rooftop was covered in bird droppings, old as rocks, but here there were none.

The eaves blocked the big man's sight lines to this point. Even if they hadn't, he would never have been able to peer through the gloom. But if someone had been 'slinking around' then whoever had been watching would have been moving. I stared down across the street, and my view was fenced on both sides by chimneys and gables. Yet the view to the broad windows where she liked to work on her clocks was perfect. She had been there, working while she talked with me all afternoon.

I had been entirely too distracted. I'd never looked across the street from her.

In Lookshy fashion followed the military. Here it preferred a simple leather boot with a reinforced sole. Three layers of cured leather gave it rigidity and form, while allowing it to flex with the wearer's natural gait. It's supposed to be quite comfortable on long marches. Yet the foot print of whoever had rekilled Yvores Alson's ghost had been a hard, rigid boot. It was a boot for fighting, not marching, and that meant it was no mean soldier. Marines wear such footwear, for they have the Navy to carry them around. Guards and duelists wear the same thing. Fools do too, but no fool would have been able to kill a spirit. It's not an easy thing to even touch one if it doesn't want to be touched.

I dismissed a marine. While Lookshy had plenty of them, they favored heavy, chopping blades for ship-to-ship combat. That kind of weapon excelled at tearing down masts or shredding rigging, but would be useless for a thrust. The lunge that had finished Yvores' spirit had been masterful. Guards were usually issued broadswords or spears. The former were cheap, and the latter allowed them to bring overwhelming numbers against their enemies. On the other hand, duelists loved the penache of the rapier. Horse duelists favored sabers which also lent themselves to fencing. Yvores had been silenced with a thrust. That kind of boot wouldn't be perfect for fencing and would hinder complex footwork. Either the nameless killer of Sijan was indeed a fool, or he had been unprepared.

Now I scrounged through the thatch that lead from the alley to this little spider hole. It was hard to see in the dark, but I was looking for smashed bird shit. During the day they would have to crawl to avoid silhouetting themselves, which as distracted as I'd been, I still would have noticed. There were so many that it would be nigh impossible for someone to come here without leaving some trace. Even in the dark I found them soon enough, and traced out where the straw was broken by the hard edges of a rigid-soled boot. Someone had crept along the roof beam, up from a shadowed bend in the wall.

A sudden thought occurred to me. Cavalrymen wear rigid boots to better grip the stirrups and prefer the saber. Mounted on a good horse, it would be easy for one to outdistance me to Sijan, and then from there to here.

I dropped back into the alley and crept around with my face in the dirt, sniffing at dirt. The alley was well swept, but in the cracks between the stones I smelled horse droppings. They were from earlier that day.

I circled around wide, and found the alley that serviced Salation's back door. There was a warhorse tethered there, a huge dappled stallion. It was magnificent, as tall as I at the shoulder with a simple harness of black leather. Beasts like that cost as much as the neighborhood around us. From the darkness I stared at it while a curious emptiness settled into my heart. Then a man emerged from the artificial ravine of the alley. He wore leather pants, riding boots without spurs, and at his side was a whiplike saber. Coming from the darkness where Salation's shop would be behind him, he went to the stallion's reins and unwound them from the post.

Like a nightmare I faded into the darkness and emerged from the shadow of a guttering lamppost behind him. He had swung himself up into the saddle when I stepped to his right boot and ran a yard-long crescent of steel through his kidney. For a moment he froze, and my blade plugged the wound so it couldn't bleed. I told you how Agate, my sword, is barbed. That doesn't make it difficult to thrust, but it complicates the recovery afterwards. Now I took a step forward and yanked down and out. Like a dream I sawed through his ribcage and tore the blade free. Blood fell from his body like a waterfall, and his innards dangled from Agate's hook. I pivoted on my right toe so he could see my face as he fell.

He didn't die. In fact, after the initial profusion, the bleeding stopped on its own. I'd cut him mostly in half, yet the lips of his sucking wound pursed shut. He was bone white in the darkness, but his blade came to his hand like a reflex.

Negligently I flicked his innards from my weapon to the ground. For a moment we stared at each other in the silent night, while the great stallion snorted and pranced backwards, smelling blood. It looked eager for a fight. Other than that there were no sounds.

The horseman stared at between our naked blades. The steel in mine shown blue in the moonlight, while his radiated a strange puissance of its own. Around us the city was still settling into sleep.

Cautiously, he nudged the stallion's side with a foot. It took a step sideways, and then retreated backwards. He backed away until he came to a side street, and then turned and rode away without a word. I watched him go but did nothing.

Once he was gone I stared briefly at my weapon. Whatever power cleaned it had already done so, and I second guessed myself, wondering if I'd even struck home at all. Then I saw the pool of blood on the sidewalk, and stared at the pile of organs in the center of it. My stroke had gone home perfectly. I'd ripped out his lungs, probably lanced his heart, and he hadn't died. There was no explaining it.

There was also no time. I banished my weapon Elsewhere and sprinted into the alley. Her house was easy to find, because she was still awake, sitting with her old mother by a window. I could see her frame lit by candles. That was on the second story, and below her the house was dark.

I felt the windows, searching each one until I found one unlocked. The latch was simple, and a dexterous individual could have opened it with a thin blade or a wire hook. I slid it open and glided through.

Within lay her kitchen. She kept it clean, but mostly it had the unused tidiness of a single woman with more house than she needed. I bent down, put my nose to the floor, and sniffed. There was a trail of horse scent across the floor, very faint, possibly no more than residual spoor left on boots. On fingers and toes I followed it to the pantry.

The house was so silent that the sound of Salation's southern voice, talking quietly to her mother came through the ceiling. The pantry was almost underneath that room. None of the food, and there wasn't much, bore the scent of horse, but one of the wooden planks of the floor did. I played with the nails until the secret of it was clear.

Underneath, resting in a tiny alcove, lay the removed pages of the Haid chronicles of the history of Yvores Alson. It was all there, every missing page. In addition were coins and silverware. I stared at them curiously. I'd already stolen that silverware once and fenced it in the city. It was hard to gather up so that none of it clinked, but soon I had everything. A gesture sent it Elsewhere, and there it could clink all it wanted. No noise would escape. I replaced the floor board, stole back out the open window, and flicked it closed with a bit of wire.

In the alley behind her house I stared up at the woman's silhouette in the window. She looked tired, but the sound of her voice had been content. She liked to talk about her days with her mother. It must have been relaxing. I didn't want to watch. There was a quiet, flat anger in me that made my skin feel oily. It repelled me to even look at Salation with that feeling. I entered the shadows of the city, and put miles between me and that place.


	5. Chapter 5

Rock the Hammer spent his evenings in a dim tavern set mostly underground by the docks. Dead rats floated in the beer barrels under a smoke stained ceiling. Rock himself spent his time playing dice with grease stained fingers. He played with sailors who had only a day in the city. When he won he took their money, and when he lost they took his stolen merchandise to the far parts of the world, where a missing candlestick would never be found. By the time I found him he was on a hot streak, and his pile of money and loot lay fat beside him. The bar's doorman let me in with only a grunt, and I joined Rock at his game.

"Hey, buddy, we're playing now. Why don't you come back later?" he told me, jiggling his bone dice in his palm like they were searing his skin. Four sailors were hunched around him, staring at an open space before a wall. They each had coins clutched in their fists.

"Why don't you leave your game for a moment and come talk to me?" I suggested instead.

"Can't leave hot dice, buddy. Just can't do it." he countered. He flicked them against the wall, and everyone hissed when they came up pips and ticks. Rock scooped a pile of coinage from the floor.

I reached down and dropped the pile of merchandise I'd sold him where the pile had been. He looked at it startled, recognizing it, and then put the pieces together in his head. "I'll let all this ride on your next cast," I said.

Rock looked up from the table while the sailors decided if they wanted a piece of my action. I met his eyes, and flicked my glance back at the pile. To compromise, I offered, "One throw. Then we talk."

"Right. Money in, boys," he agreed. Two of the men threw in. All four were stocky individuals, powerfully build with hoarse hands, calloused from ropework. Rock himself was a big man. Of the six people there, I was the smallest, and certainly the shortest. But Rock had been in business a long time, and hadn't stayed there by being stupid.

With a flick he cast the dice at the wall. I won and raked in a pile of cash. The sailors snarled when we got up to leave, but he promised to return soon. They went to drinking as we went to talk.

"Are we going to talk politely, or do I need to call my friends in?" he asked, as we settled into a booth by the corner.

"How many of your friends do you want to die?" I asked simply.

"I have a lot of friends."

"Want to keep them?"

"You aren't armed," he observed.

I made an empty fist, and then flicked my thumb upwards. With a 'chink' Agate's handle appeared, rising from empty space, exposing a hair's breath of blue steel. The blade went down into my closed hand, and didn't come out below.

"I let them ride to a westerner, a woman with big friends who had a bad run of luck," he said, without preamble. I cupped my sword's pommel stone and pushed it into my other fist. My hands met with a clap, and then they were empty again. Rock kept talking. "She'd already lost quite a bit of money, and her boys were getting that hard eyed look of poor men with a lot of booze in them. I let her take the sack you sold me to keep things quiet. She was supposed to ship out the next day, I think she was a first mate, and never thought I'd see her again."

"What was the ship's name?"

"Orca's Waves."

"Was she a pirate?"

"I didn't ask."

"Guess."

"I make a career of not guessing," he replied.

That was true. It was a necessary habit in his line of work. "Where was she going?"

"Buddy, I don't ask questions. I just roll the dice."

That also rang true. He didn't call me 'buddy' because we were friends, after all. "Drunk sailors talk. What else did they say?"

"Didn't you hear me?" he chided me, getting angry. "I don't pay attention to things."

"Rock, you have just come down with the first symptom of a very serious disease. The second symptom is dismemberment. Call you friends, and we'll see how contagious it is."

He bit his lip. I could tell he was thinking about my sword, the way it had come from no where, and the unusual color of the blade. "There are stage magicians who make a living off sleight of hand like that," he noted.

"There are assassins who do too," I responded. "Now, if this is a matter of pride, I'll give you the merchandise again. I've already sold it to you once, and I wouldn't have done that if I wanted it. But if I'm selling things again, this time I want answers instead of money."

"I gave you the ship's name," he reminded me.

"And somehow I doubt any harbormaster registered a vessel named the Orca's Wave in the last month, if ever, even assuming you aren't lying," I snapped.

"Wait, wait," he pleaded. "They talked about the stink of the vessel. Said it was worse then they'd ever smelled before. Every harbor stinks, but the refuse from the factories underground spills out downriver, by the point. All the good ships dock further up to get away from the smell, but there are a couple piers out there. People usually don't use them unless they want to stay away from other people."

I stared at him. That didn't make any sense. Sailors weren't the type of people to be easily repelled by a bad smell, yet his words seemed to hint at something. "Explain."

"She lost a lot of money that evening. What if I told you she lost all jade script?" he offered.

Everyone used jade, but the Realm used the most, and only the Realm used jade script. It was a fiat currency their Scarlet Empress put in place to keep the peasantry from getting rich. Rich peasantry lead to an uppity peasantry. Realm money wasn't worth much in Lookshy, at least not publicly. That didn't mean it wouldn't spend. In fact, if someone had a lot of Realm money and the Realm wasn't too happy about how they'd gotten it, Lookshy would be the perfect place to get rid of it. The Realm was on the other side of the Inner Sea, and no ship named after killer whales could be anything but a pirate.

That confirmed what I suspected, but did little to reveal the identity of my cavalryman. It was probably all Rock knew, though. He had made a career out of ignorance.

"What day was this?"

"Three nights ago."

"Fine. Take it," I said, and dropped the sack of merchandise. "Get rid of it. Melt it down if you have to, but get rid of it."

The bag disappeared, and I left, letting the dice game resume behind me. Once I was outside I stared at the sky, guessing the time off the stars. It was around midnight, and I could get to the plaza in time if I hurried.

That turned out to be pointless. Rush the Falling Water didn't make an appearance. I returned to the common house I stayed at and slept the rest of the morning away.

Later I went down to the piers Rock suggested. The smell certainly hadn't been exaggerated. Raw sludge from deep underground was pumped into the river here, causing a perpetual algae bloom. In a tidewater created by sharp points on either side the water was a brilliant orange, shot through with tiger stripes of red and yellow. Large black stains moved across the surface of the water, sometimes moving against the current with impunity. There were two offices by the three piers. One was marked customs, and one harbormaster. The former looked abandoned. I visited the latter.

"Morning," I said as I crossed the threshold. Inside was a dingy office, lit by the sunlight through windows with no glass. It smelled of the waste stink and incense, for cones of it smoldered in copper dishes. The smoke coiled around the ceiling like a nest of snakes.

The harbormaster herself was nothing like what I expected. She was a very neat woman, dressed in white and brown linen with the same divided skirts Salation wore. Her hair fell on the dividing line between blond and brown, and she had a naturally fair complexion, tanned slightly. I found her behind a desk, making notations on a notebook while referring to another. She had very neat handwriting.

"Hello. Can I help you?" she asked, glancing up at me.

"I'm looking for a ship."

"Name?"

"Crimson Wing."

"Is that yours or the ship's?"

"Mine," I clarified. "The ship is the Orca's Wave."

"Don't have it, don't know it. Haven't had anything like that," she replied. The blanket denial was flat and ready. She hadn't even considered it.

"Perhaps you've had another vessel then," I asked, changing direction. "It would have been here a couple days ago, probably sailed shortly thereafter. The captain, or possibly the mate, was a woman, and would have paid in jade script."

"I take jade script, but don't make a note of it," she said blandly. "And a lot of captains of women. Half the people in the world are too. I'm one, you know."

"I noticed," I replied urbanely. "But I'm looking for someone in particular."

"Aren't we all?" she rejoined me.

I considered the deliberate stonewall. She had only made one mistake. When she hadn't even considered her books at the name Orca's Wave, that meant the name was fresh in her mind, and the denial was rehearsed.

"What about a man? A cavalry officer. Rides a big horse."

"Calvarymen usually do ride horses. Otherwise they're infantry."

I dropped a bag of money onto her desk beside her. "Can we negotiate so I don't keep wasting my time?" I asked.

She looked at me, glanced at the purse, and then firmly pushed it back at me. "Whether or not you waste your time is completely up to you," she replied evenly.

The harbormaster in a place like this wasn't accepting a bribe? That struck me as absurd, if not impossible.

"Very well. Thank you for your time," I said, taking my purse back and tucking it into my belt.

"Goodbye, Crimson Wing," she said with finality, and returned to her books.

"You know, you never told me your name," I mentioned before I left.

"I do know," she agreed without looking up.

I nodded to myself and walked outside.

There were currently two ships docked at the piers. One was salt encrusted with rime around the features. It was flying a northern flag. As the lap of waves lifted and dropped the waterline against its hull, I could see the wood was stained with algae, but that was all green. It clearly hadn't been here long, probably since the morning tide. The other ship was partially dilapidated, and half a dozen men were working in the rigging. The lines had all been taken down from the forward mast, except for a great block and tackle. That was put to use in the graceful lowering of a bare spar to the deck. A glance at the waterline revealed it was orange halfway up.

"Ahoy there!" I called from the dock. "Permission to come aboard?"

An old man with a ratty beard had been supervising the lowering of the spar and turned to me now. "Don't talk like you know what you're talking about, shoreman," he replied flatly. "It's an insult to those of us who do."

I blinked and changed tacts. "I'm looking for a ship. I think it sailed from here yesterday or the day before."

"Then you've already missed it," he said shortly.

Unconsciously I clenched my fist, and then forced my hand to relax. "It would have been docked here. It was named the Orca's Wave."

The man scowled at me, and then stomped over to the deck's railing. "Listen, you bloody fool. You don't talk about ladies with names like that, especially not while we're under repair. It's a terrible luck."

I nearly lunged for the superstitious old goat. I was the one who associated with ghosts, and he was talking to me about luck?

"What about a horseman? Can we talk about that?" I nearly snarled.

"What about it?"

"Have you seen one?"

"Does this have anything to do with the other thing?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out!"

"Then no, because I'm not talking about that."

So either it did, and he wasn't going to tell me about it because of his superstitions, or it didn't, and he wasn't going to tell me about it because he was an idiot. I considered knifing him and dumping his body over the side. It wouldn't accomplish anything but make me feel better. Also, the only knife I had was rather distinctive. It was time to switch approaches again. "What about you? Can I bribe you to pull your head out of your ass?"

That elicited a conflicted expression in the man. The word "bribe" was as potent with this man as it should be, but he'd taken a powerful dislike to me. The feeling was mutual. He came closer at my offer of bribery though. Now he was standing on the deck just above the long wooden ramp that lead to the pier. Behind him, the spar finally descended past the level where the deck blocked my sight and touched down. The grizzled man called over his shoulder a string of terms I can only assume were nautical, and the men relaxed.

"You've a hostile attitude about you," he told me. He spoke to me in an almost completely different dialect than he used on his crew. It was nearly a different language. "But I'm interested in your use of the word 'bribe.'"

"Then come down here, and we'll talk about it. All I want to know about is a ship and a horseman."

He sidled down the ramp to me. I have no intention of referring to it as a gang plank, because it was several planks laid together, reinforced with wooden trusses pegged together. Also I'd already been corrected on my misuse of nautical terminology once. Once the both of us were on the dock he asked, "How much is what you want to know worth to you?"

"Depends on how worthwhile it is," I replied. To whet his interested I reached into a pocket and produced a silver coin. It should keep him in his cups for a while. I flicked it at him, and he snagged it from the air. "Now, the ship. Tell me about it."

"She sailed the day before yesterday with the tide. The captain, the mate, and the pilot were all women, and fair looking ones at that, but more than half the crew were men. Big, ugly men they were, who spoke little and thought less."

That matched up with what I already knew. It wasn't useful, but it confirmed Rock's story. "The horseman?"

"Didn't see one."

That was simply useless. "Is this a luck thing?"

"There's no luck in horses, good or bad. The only thing in horses is horse shit, which they provide in great quantities if you ever find yourself on board with one."

"When the ship sailed, where was it headed?"

"No way to tell. The main channel runs east to the sea, and from there it could go anywhere a wind could follow it. More than likely it had no set destination, if you catch my meaning."

"I see." I thought for a while. My questions remained, and little had come of them. Somehow I doubted I'd get anything else interesting from this old salt. I tossed him another coin and departed.


	6. Chapter 6

Autumn sun in the afternoon was warm in Lookshy. I sat in a small park and read through the pages the horseman had planted in Salation's pantry. They covered the Reprieve in detail, describing the proposed course it would take north, past what is now Halta. From there they would have headed northeast beyond the modern edge of the world. There the trees grew thick and wild. It was cold in the winter, but close to where the sun rose, so the days were long year round. The expedition had been lead by a score of Dragon-Bloods, sixteen of which were reported alive by the messenger that the Fair Folk had intercepted. These notes had the itinerary, route, and plans the operation had taken. Most of the roads didn't exist any more, having fallen into ruin in the last millenia. Other parts of the trip would go through lands now claimed by the fae or pass through shadowlands. Yet someone could follow the route all the way to the edge of the world, were one so inclined.

I stared into the sky and wondered if I was so inclined. The short answer was no, I wasn't. Even if I followed the Reprieve into the wyld, the trail would be gone. Even the ground the running forces would have traversed no longer existed. In the deep wyld mountains would rise and sing where the Shogunate rescuers had swam rivers. East and north would no longer be meaningful terms. Even if I did find where the kingdom of Aphor had been, it wouldn't be there any more. Even 'here' and 'there' would not constrain the pure wildness.

After considering that, I suddenly wondered why my antagonist had planted these pages. They were more helpful than anything else had been on this trip. It could be a trap, but that made no sense. A good trap would have fewer details and be far more enticing.

I rose, purchased a small cloth sack, and put the papers in. At a candle shop I obtained wax to seal it, and stamped it with a small silver penny. It would do for a crest. Then I walked to a block over from the Haid residence and found an errand boy. For the penny he took the sack and promised to deliver it to Haid's uncles for me. I watched from a corner as he handed it to the gate guards. From there they passed it to their own errand boy, and it went inside.

By now it was approaching evening again. It was late to visit the clockmaker girl, but I'd told her I would come. Thus I made my way to her place and knocked on the door as she was closing up her shop.

"I was starting to wonder if you'd forgotten," she said as she let me in.

"Sorry. I've been busy." I apologized and made my vague excuse. She took it without saying anything. "How are you?" She shut the door and ran the bolt, while I divested myself of my jacket.

"Good. I finished another piece and sold the bird. It went for more than I expected."

"Who'd you sell it to?"

"A young cavalry officer. He didn't give me his name."

I paused, and then hung my jacket up. Salation was looking at me with her deep brown eyes that were flecked with gold. She had a satisfied expression, like she was enjoying making conversation after working all day. I met her eyes, and let my gaze drift over the curve of her neck into her shoulders. Her skin was so smooth. "Tell me about it?" I asked.

"Are you jealous?" she asked suddenly, smirking at me impishly.

I wanted to sputter denials, but I caught myself. "Maybe. Why don't you tell me about it? What happened?"

"He came in and bought a clock," she said simply. "He was very nice, said he wanted something impressive that no one else could have. That bird was the most unique thing I have, and once he saw it he immediately asked about the price. After that he didn't even haggle. He sounded rich."

"Was he handsome?" I asked, and faked a smile. She bought it and smirked again.

"Yes, as a matter of fact he was. He wore his uniform, but not the armor, and he tethered his big horse out front. Are you thirsty? I bought some wine after he left that I haven't opened yet."

"Please," I replied. "This officer, was he just back from an exercise or a battle?"

"How would I know?" she asked. She saw me seated in the chair I'd used yesterday, and left to the drinks. I settled in and looked around. She hadn't yet closed the broad windows. On an impulse I glanced up at the watcher's nest across the street. There was no one there.

When she returned, I asked, "Was he injured?"

"He didn't look like it. After he paid for the clock he bowed to me very gracefully. Very nice of him," she concluded, handing me my glass. It was a local red, and the taste was soothing. I sipped it while I lay back in my chair, thinking.

This was beginning to sound like it had nothing to do with Aphor. If he wanted to block my access there, he would have burned those pages, not planted them. Visiting Salation seemed like he was making a statement. This had the earmarks of something personal.

"This is very nice wine," I complimented her. "Thank you."

She smiled at me. We sat without saying anything as the light diminished, and the sun sank into the distance.

"How are you?" she asked.

"I'm fine," I replied. "Enjoying myself. It's nice to relax."

"Been working all day?" she continued.

"Some of it. I'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind," I said.

"You never talk about what you do during the day," she pointed out.

"At least I'm honest about it," I replied. "If you want I can make up stories of knife fights and bar brawls. I know a couple of good ones about horse thieves."

"Why do you know horse thieves?"

"Because I talked to the man who sold your officer his horse," I rebutted snidely.

She scoffed at me. "He was far too much a gentleman to ride a stolen horse. Besides, you're a foreigner. You don't know that the Seventh Legion provides horses to their cavalry when they get their spurs. It's supposed to be a big event."

I had a sudden thought. "Was he wearing spurs?"

She blinked. "No, actually. Normally someone who wears spurs chimes as he walks. This officer didn't."

"Which is why he had to buy a stolen horse," I pointed out and kept thinking.

Last night, when I'd run him through, he hadn't worn spurs either. Then I'd assumed it was for silence. But he had been wearing his hard boots, when for silence he should have worn something softer. If he was adroit enough that he could silence his footsteps, spurs wouldn't make a difference. I was just guessing that he used magic, but people don't stay upright after you cut their lungs out. They don't stay alive.

"Well, I think he was nice," she snorted. After that she tried to look lofty while she drank her wine, but she only looked adorable. I was powerfully willed with a desire to touch her.

"How's you're mother?" I asked, changing that line of thought.

"She's fine," Salation replied, a little sadly. "I went to an apothecary, and he made her a new tonic. It quiets the coughing, but now she sleeps all the time."

"The next time she's awake when I'm around, I'd like to say hello."

"If you ever stay for dinner you can," she pointed out.

I didn't want to tell her that the first time she'd offered me a meal I had only accepted to escape pursuit for my breaking and exiting. Now I felt guilty at the thought. "Maybe some other time. I'm on a strict died of bitter dreams and children's tears."

"Well, I'm fresh out of children's tears, but if you want bitter dreams I can let you have some of my mother's last medicine. I tasted it once and had nightmares for a week."

"Smelled like onions?" I asked. "And cinnamon?"

Salation blinked, caught off guard. "How did you know that?"

"Wode's weed. It's usually served in a cinnamon solution to deaden the taste. Otherwise it's so nasty you can't drink it." I replied. "It's good for sicknesses of the chest, but gives you terrible dreams. Normally that's not a problem because the patient is awake all night coughing anyway, but you didn't have that problem, did you?"

She was looking at me very surprised. "You know medicine?"

A lie occurred to me then. It was a brilliant lie, that didn't actually involve any falsehoods, just implications and suggestions. All I needed to say was, "You don't really think I spent all my time in knife fights and horse thieving," and she would believe something totally untrue. I looked at her beautiful eyes, and thought of how many inconvenient questions I could avoid.

"Quite a bit. But I haven't practiced in a while," I replied truthfully, if evasively.

"My momma always wanted me to meet a doctor."

"Your mother knows enough doctors for the two of you," I opined. "And she probably knows more about tonics and potions than me. But I haven't done medicine in a long time, and I'm not a doctor now."

"Why not?" she asked the most obvious of the inconvenient questions I wanted to avoid.

I considered answering fully and honestly. 'Because the last time I was a doctor, that's how I met my wife. I didn't find out until later that she was using me to find people who were going to die anyway and lock their souls up so she could use them to bargain with demons. I killed her on our anniversary earlier this year.'

"I'd rather not talk about it," I said calmly.

"Oh, you never want to talk about anything!" she complained.

"I want to talk about you."

"And I want to talk about you. Who are you? What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a horse thief," I lied, badly.

"Are you? Really?"

"No," I admitted. In my life I'd never stolen a horse. "But I thought about it pretty hard once."

She growled at me. It was adorable again. I glanced at my wine glass, and it was empty. "Thank you for the drink. But it's late, and you must be hungry." I excused myself as I rose.

"I'm not that hungry," she replied.

I listened for a moment. Her stomach was muttering to itself like the peevish old archivist from Gens Haid's library. She looked at me, and then slapped her hands over her belly while she flushed.

"Well, maybe a little," she added.

"But only a little. Good night, Salation. If you are still having bad dreams from the wode, eat rye bread without oil. It'll get rid of it for you."

"Thank you, Crimson Wing. If that is your real name," she said suspiciously as she got up and walked me to the door.

"It isn't," I replied cheerfully. "I am the Bloody Baron of Black Cliff. I've come for your women and your horses."

"Well, you can only have one of those."

"Fine. Do you know where I can get some feed for the horses then? I think their stomachs are growling."

She pushed me out the door and bolted it behind me. I hopped down the steps and saw her shutting the bay windows. I smiled, and she pretended to scowl at me. Ultimately she couldn't hold it and smiled back. After that I walked away up the road. I knew once my back was turned she stopped smiling, and was staring after me with a sad and disappointed look. The big man on the far side of the street was scowling at me as well as he kept an eye on the neighborhood. I tried to ignore them both and walked away quickly.

There seemed to be little to do but wait for the god. There was that, or ambush this cavalryman. Sitting on top of a house several blocks away I let time roll by while I watched Salation's house. I didn't expect him to come at night. He wouldn't make that mistake again. However I could not be sure, nor leave this to chance. Thus until nearly midnight I perched among chimneys, and then dashed off to the plaza across rooftops. I arrived breathless and gasping, but dropped from a balcony to the plaza's pavestones several seconds before there was a shimmering distortion in the water.

Rush the Falling Water looked different. Not younger, for gods are ageless and can be as old as they choose, but healthier. He didn't have the appearance of mad desperation. Now there was a touch of pride in him that was different from the hollow arrogance of the disenfranchised. He still only emerged to the waist from the fountain, but projected a slight air of divine charisma now.

"Mortal," he greeted me.

"Spirit," I insulted him right back.

The god considered this but ignored it. "I have found he of whom you spoke. His name was Medor, of the valley of Kit. In the two hundred and ninth year of the Shogunate he was scheduled to die, but his soul did not move on. Just a few months ago he entered Lethe and was absolved of the memories of life. His children and his children's children lived in the valley of Kit and did me honor as their righteous patron for many years, for the Immaculate Order was young then and did not have the stranglehold it does now."

That sounded promising. There couldn't be that many souls who took fourteen hundred odd years to move on.

"Does he have any descendants?"

"None who live. His line was never fertile, and few of his progeny left the valley of Kit in my kingdom of Aphor. Those who did were exterminated to a man in the Contagion."

"Then who was he fettered too?" I exclaimed.

"Peace, Sun-Child. I mean none who live within fate. I spoke to the mad god of the wyld, and learned that indeed souls may live within realms cut off from here, and thus not governed by the Loom of Destiny. Fate is simply heaven's method of accounting for the world. One can exist outside it much as one can exist outside of a nation's census in a neighboring realm."

The old god had gotten calmer with the hope of reinstatement dangled before him. I followed his example.

"But now I must find his descendants. How can that be done?" I asked.

"There is a way," he said seriously.

"That being?"

"It will not be easy."

"Can we skip the preamble? You've been waiting for eight hundred years for this. We don't need to continue to protract it."

"You are very impatient for someone who isn't mortal."

I considered shanking him right then and there. Only that that would not get me to my goal stayed my hand. Instead I waited and stared at him, tapping my foot.

"Sun-Child, the ancient contracts that bind us together ordain that I may not give you this information without providing you such warnings as I am able. You must cross the known world and into the deep wyld beyond. There nature is not constrained or bound to a form. Beyond that lie-"

"The point!" I interrupted. Salation and her mother were at home, alone. I was here, which meant I was not watching them.

"Are you familiar with the Reprieve?"

"Very."

"Then you know they took a Whispering Windchime with them. It extended the range of the Terrestrial Exalted's Wind Carried Words Technique a hundredfold. Unfortunately, it was still wasn't enough to reach the far land of Aphor. Thus they left it at Mugada, the midway point on their travels."

"I didn't know that," I admitted.

"Then you don't know that Ho-Tep, God of Lost Artifacts, knows that in Mugada it resides still. And it is still bound to its mate, a windchime that the leader of the expedition brought with him. They were deep into the land that now lies within the wyld before they found Aphor, but by then their route was cut off. The garrison at Mugada was overun by the fae and slaughtered to a man, but not before they activated their final protocol and released a tide of iron upon the fort. It drove the fair folk out and killed any who returned. Now Mugada lies alone, desolate, but immune to the touches of the wyld on the very edge of Creation."

"What makes you think that it will still work?"

"It was made in either the early years of the Shogunate or during the high First Age. Their mastery of artificing has never been exceeded or equaled. Since then it's been safe in Mugada, where no living thing can touch it," the god replied.

I thought back to the pages I'd read earlier. Mugada had been a way point, north of present day Halta. It was possible, though not certain, that that place would still remain intact. If it did still exist and I could find it, then the Whispering Windchime might still exist as well. I was certain that if I could put my hands on it, I could devise some way of following it to its mate. The prospect before me was traversing Lookshy to Mugada, several thousand miles, and that was only halfway. The trip could easily take me years. Yet I had given my word.

"All right," I said quietly. "I'll do it. I have things to wrap up. Return to Yu Shan, and learn whatever else you can on this affair. Settling things here should not take more than a few weeks."

"What happened to your impatience, Sun-Child?" asked the god. "Moments before you rebelled at a moment's pause, now you tell me you won't even leave for weeks?"

I reached forward, grabbed the god by the beard and yanked him to me. His body followed his beard, but there was nothing below his waist by an amorphous tendril of water that flowed to the fountain. "Do not taunt me, small god. I will do this thing. It would be best for you to be filled with gratitude." I hissed, letting his form dangle from my fist.

"Impudence!" he snarled and vanished. At once he was both invisible and immaterial.

I was, however, a sorcerer. My other hand darted forward, snagged his intangible presence, and yanked, dragging him suddenly and violently back to the material world. Now he hung startled from my grip, shedding droplets of water as his power ablated off in my presence.

"Do not start, small god," I hissed again. "You are old and weak. No one in Yu Shan will care if your miserable existence ends here, and the other small gods of the field will delight that they no longer share your feast day's worship with you."

He tried to pull away, but I refused to let him. Now the old being had real fear, for now he realized how little he'd had before and how dear even that had become to him.

"Peace, peace, Sun-Child. Let us be allies. I dearly want you to succeed on this quest," he pleaded with me.

"That is wise," I agreed and released him. At once I regretted my temper. He was an old and weak god, as I said, but deserved respect. Yet now I was committed to leaving Lookshy. I was leaving the streets, the parks, and a southern clockmaker and her shop. "Just go. See if you can find a way to get me to Mugada quickly. I'll contact you when I'm ready to leave."

Without watching him vanish I turned and left. The loneliness of the silent Plaza of Voices Raised in Song struck me as it had not done so before. I walked between silent houses, doors locked and windows shuttered, on empty streets until I was once again on Weft street. Her house was dark. No candlelight shone through the upstairs windows. I sighed deeply, and sank down on the stairs that lead to her porch. Playing with rocks by the road was pointless, but took my mind off things.

"Stranger, didn't I tell you-" began the big man. Did he have nothing to do but sit outside his house and growl? I didn't care. Taking a pebble I launched it with my thumb into his flapping mouth. It bounced off his tongue and dropped down his throat, lodging itself in his airway. Instantly he stopped talking.

I stared at my fingers while he gurgled and tottered around. Finally I relented and strode over. He was on his knees, turning blue, and clutching his throat. A firm punch to his chest knocked the stone flying, and he lay gasping for air.

"Listen carefully. I understand you mean the best, and I appreciate that. But I am not your enemy, and mean no harm to the lady clockmaker. Now leave me alone and go away. Do you understand me?"

He was still gasping when he choked out an affirmative. I grabbed his hand, shook it firmly, and let the bronze mark on my forehead flash to seal the deal. He didn't notice because he was still on his hands and knees, gasping on the ground. By the time he looked up I'd released him and reverted to normal. At some level he knew, though. When the big man could walk he got up and left, and I walked back to stare at Salation's door.

A few moments of blank minded stillness later, it opened and she stood before me, dressed in a loose blue robe. I looked up at her mutely.

"Would you like to come in?" she asked.

"Very much," I admitted.

She stepped aside until she wasn't blocking the entrance way. I sighed like I was confronting my executioner at his block and trudged up.

Once I was inside she shut the door behind me and ran the bolt. I stared around her dark hallway, into the still workshop, and finally at her. The robe was loose and formless, concealing the curves of her body. Her shoulders rose out of it like cresting waves, as did the swell of her breasts and hips. Once the bolt was shot she turned to face me, expectantly.

Without really considering my actions, I reached out and embraced her. Unconsciously I sought her lips, and kissed her while I hugged the swell of her back. Once her body pressed mine the concealing property of the robe vanished, and the only thing that separated us was thin cotton. I held her for a very long time, stroking her lips with my tongue, and teasing hers. Finally I pulled away but did not let her go. She met my gaze levelly, before sinking her forehead into the side of my neck.

"I was beginning to wonder," she admitted.

"Don't. It's never been in question," I assured her.

"Good. I don't like inviting strange men into my house at night if it is."

I picked her up and leaned backwards, that her body fell against mine while I held her. Her hair fell around my face. It smelled strangely of strawberries.

"Would you like to come to bed?" she asked into the side of my neck.

I had so many things I wanted to say none of them came out. My jaw worked for a bit meaningless.

"We can talk in the morning, you know," she told me.

I gave up on talking or thinking. After that I carried her upstairs, until she pointed me though a doorway to a small bedroom. It was smaller than the workshop downstairs. The sheets had been thrown back, and the small central depression was still warm. I laid her on the center of it and pulled off her robe.

In the darkness her skin was the color of mahogany wood. She tasted like girl, that subtle mixture of skin, sweat, and sweetness that's inherently feminine. I kissed her until she managed to pull my clothing off and then entered her softly. Pinned underneath my weight, she held on until she clawed my back and I lost my mind. Then we lay still until we did it again.


	7. Chapter 7

In the morning I woke up to find her lying in the crook of my arm, with her head on my shoulder. Her skin was amazingly smooth and warm. She was asleep on her side, with one hand nestled into the notch over my sternum. Her hair fell over my shoulder but just barely touched the pillows. When I inhaled it left them, but settled again afterwards. Watching that I stroked her hand and face.

Eventually she woke up. Coffee colored eyes glanced up at me, as dawn light trickled through the window. It was still dark, but now her skin was burgundy.

"Hey, you," she said quietly, with her voice still sleepy.

"Hi."

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Warm," I replied.

"I noticed. Its amazing. I haven't been this warm since I left Paragon."

"I'd wondered where you were from," I said simply.

"You should have asked. It isn't a secret."

"Well, now I know," I said, and poked her very gently on the tip of her nose. She scrunched it up to frown at me, and then closed her eyes and relaxed. For a while my fingers stroked her face, and then they settled onto the curve of her throat. My eyes grew heavy, and I fell back asleep.

When we finally did get out of bed, which was not until much after we woke up the second time, I let her cook me breakfast. She made vegetables and eggs, and a warm flatbread dish, like a pancake, served with cinnamon and sugar. It was very good, but I didn't really pay attention to the food. I was watching the quick, almost unconscious movements of her hands as she ate. After the meal she took a plate up to her mother and spoon fed her. When the dishes were done I joined her, and we talked while her mother stared blankly at the wall.

"Do you mind?" I asked, gesturing towards the little old lady. Salation looked at me curiously, before catching my meaning.

"Please," she invited.

I reached out and gently touched her mother's face. The skin was warm. I pulled down her eyelids and glanced at the underside of her eyeballs. Then I poked her chest, listened to her breath and counted out her pulse. She responded to stimuli but only made reflexive actions.

"Well?" Salation asked when I was done.

"She isn't coughing, which is good, but you can still feel difficulty when she breathes. There's a lot of fluid in there. I'll go to a herbalist later and see what I can do," I promised. Then, suddenly worried I'd said too much, I clarified, "If there is anything I can, that is. She's old, and even if I-"

The young woman reached out a coppery hand and still my words with a hand on my arm. "I understand. We've been through this before. If there's anything you can do, thank you." She smiled at me, gratefully, but full of sadness.

Later, we went down and opened the shop. It wasn't hard, but I had never opened a clockwork store before. She showed me how to wind up all the pieces that sat on the windowsill to attract attention, and where to put the lights to show off the pieces in the back to the best effect. Once everything was ready and she was about to open to door, I paused her and held her again. She settled easily into my embrace, and her smell filled my nose again.

"I don't know if they do things different here," she commented as I clung to her. "But you're a lot sadder than I expected for a morning after, all things considered."

I laughed, and picker her up so I could sit her on my lap as I sat in my usual chair. "It's not that. You were wonderful. It's-" I stopped, at a loss.

"The thing you wanted to tell me last night," she guessed.

I stroked her arms. "I came to Lookshy looking for instructions on how to fulfill an oath. I didn't even know if it was possible. Last night I found out there was a way. After taking care of a few loose ends I have to go."

She sank slightly and leaned into me. "Where are you going?"

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "The next step is Murada. I don't know where I'm going after that."

"Where's Murada? I've never heard of it."

"North," I said simply. "North of Halta."

"Oh," she said, and then she understood.

"I'm sorry. Would you rather we not if you had known?"

Salation shrugged, still with her face in my chest. "It doesn't matter, does it? We did. I don't regret it."

"Good." Then, because that sounded insufficient, "You were wonderful."

"Yes. I know," she said, and her whole demeanor changed. Like pinching out a candle her sadness was gone, and she stood up and stretched languidly. "I'm like that."

I smiled at her and stood up. Putting my hands on her sides I pulled her against me as she stretched, watching the way she arched her back and the way it made her breasts move under her clothing. She leaned in to me, and I kissed her again.

"Are you going out to do more unspoken work?" she asked.

"Yes," I admitted. "But I'll go to the herbalist first. I have a couple ideas."

"Don't worry about it," she said calmly. "The new stuff the apothecary gave us stops the coughing. That's better than she's been since my father died."

"Well, we'll see," I said noncommittally and let her go. She walked me to the door again, and let me out as the store opened for the day. "One question. Do you follow the immaculate faith?"

She looked at me archly. "You mean the parts about how men and women should relate?"

"No," I replied. "Just in general."

"Not really," she admitted. "I'm not quite a Hundred Gods heathen, but in the part of Paragon I'm from we don't worry too much about what a fiery dragon says we should do."

Hopefully that meant she broke with their stance on Anathema, and the 'must kill on sight' part of the sacred precepts. I didn't necessarily intend to reveal all to her, but it was the sort of thing that was useful to know.

"I'll see you later. After I go to the herbalist," I told her.

"If you want," she said with a shrug and turned back inside to work on her clocks. I disappeared into the city streets.

As things worked out I went to nine different herbalists. Each of the naturalists had some of what they wanted of varying qualities. At the first I bought everything they had, for fear I wouldn't find it anyplace else, but at the second I could be a bit more selective. By the time it was evening and I'd finished my rounds I had everything I wanted, a glass jar to mix it in, and a bit of marble for my grinding. I returned to the clockshop to find Salation's perpetually moving hands strangely still as she stared into the brass gears before her like they had hidden depths.

"Hi," I said, stepping in the door behind her. She glanced up at me, and her expression looked vaguely hollow. Then it flickered, like before, and she was calm and unperturbed.

"Hello. How are you?"

"Good," I replied cheerfully. "Better now. I found everything I wanted."

"Oh, you went to the herbalists? I told you not to," she said, a little surprised.

I shrugged. "It could do no harm. Mind if I head up to your kitchen to mix this up?"

"No, that's fine. I was actually getting ready to close up."

"Take your time," I replied simply.

"All right then. You know where the kitchen is."

"Thanks." I was suddenly unsure if I should kiss her or not. Instead I hustled upstairs.

First I slid the glass jar onto a table and filled it half way with strawberry rum. There was no medicinal purpose to that except it tasted good. Then I measured out the herbs I wanted, piled them all up on the sheet of marble, and glanced around to see if anyone was watching. No one was.

I filled my hand with gold light, raised the intensity up to 'noon in the desert of fire' and slammed my open palm with boiling essence into the stray herbs. Forcing the power into them suddenly filled them with arcane vitality they could not endure, and seconds later they crumbled into multicolored powders. The room smelled of sunlit fields atop the mountains of the east. I scraped the residue into the vial with a knife, corked it, and let that seep. Below, the front door bolt slid home and soon thereafter Salation appeared.

"Hey, beautiful. Think you can talk your mother into drinking this?" I asked, showing her the vial. It looked like muddy water.

"What's that smell?" she asked, ignoring my question.

"What's in here," I replied. "Some gherst, some alanic, some strawberry rum for the taste. This and that."

"Will that help her?" she asked me, eying the vial. She took another deep sniff, and the aroma of the kitchen filled her nose. Unconsciously she stood straight, and the faint tension in her face as she held her smile faded. Her body relaxed, and she reclaimed a little of the transcendent beauty she'd had when we woke up that morning.

"It won't hurt," I said truthfully. "Why don't we go give her a sip?"

She mulled over it, but the fading scent of herbs relaxed her doubts. Eventually she gave me permission to give her mother a taste.

"There's not too much rum in there, is there? She's old, and can't handle it if it's strong."

The whole vial was only slightly larger than a skimpy shot at a cheap bar. "She'll be fine. Promise."

She eyed me, but lead the way to where her mother sat, staring at a wall. There was a bit of phlegm on her lips which I dabbed off with a napkin. "What's her name?" I asked Salation. I'd always referred to the family matron as 'your mother.'

"Telitia," was the reply.

"Well, Mrs. Telitia, this probably won't even taste as bad as the other stuff you've getting," I told her conversationally as I opened her mouth. My elbow managed to bump a fork from lunch off a table, and it plunged for her daughter's sandaled foot. She jerked it back out of the way, taking her eyes off her mother for a brief second. That was enough for me to send a blast of power into the vial, bringing it to a rolling boil that had nothing to do with heat, and pour the liquid down the old woman's throat. She swallowed instinctively. "Sorry," I said to the daughter as I silently began to count in my head. "Did I get you?"

"No. I noticed you try, though," she said archly, picking up the fork. She was joking, I hoped, for I had only intended to miss. "Is that it?"

"For her? Oh, yes. Just a little sip."

She stared at her mother in silence for a few seconds. "Is something supposed to happen?" she asked politely.

"Oh, not immediately," I assured her. _Not for at least thirty eight more seconds. _I glanced at the woman who still hadn't moved. Her catatonia seemed complete. "Do you mind if I go wash this out?"

"Oh, that's fine," she said, with a wave downstairs. She wasn't paying attention to me at all, and I began to understand how deeply she had been hiding her hope that this would work.

"Thanks."

I rose and went back to the second story kitchen. I poured a little water into the vial and set it on the counter, before leaning against the door frame as my count went to zero. I listened so hard I could hear the boards creaking as the house settled downstairs, footsteps in adjoining houses, and finally two heart beats upstairs. One was fast and tense, while another was very faint. I held my breath.

With a thud, the faint one suddenly stabilized, and started beating firmly. There was a faint cough, then another louder one, then a great hacking projection of all the gunk the apothecary's worthless tincture hadn't allowed the old lady to clear from her lungs in weeks. Then her breathing was slow and easy.

"Dear?" asked an old, confused voice.

The young woman broke down weeping. I diplomatically crept downstairs to go outside and find a child. I gave him some money and sent him off with strict instructions to bring me a specific bottle of wine. That put me almost broke again, but sacrifices had to be made. Once that was done I went back to the first floor and considered the pantry. Telitia would want food with strong tastes. I grabbed bread, garlic, oil, various spices and meat. By the time I'd whipped that up the boy had returned. I have him an few extra coins for this trouble. Then I took the platter, three glasses, and one of the best bottles of High Realm Red upstairs to the ladies.

"Hello, Mrs Telitia. We've met, but I don't think we've been properly introduced," I said as I laid the tray down. "My name is Crimson Wing."

The old lady looked up at me. Her face was flushing as unaccustomed blood flowed through her veins. For so long her body had made due with insufficient oxygen that the plethora of it running through her lungs nearly overfilled her blood. I suddenly reconsidered giving her any wine. She was half drunk on being able to breath alone.

She was a little birdlike woman. Her head made the same quick, unconscious motions that her daughter's hands did, turning about as she glanced at me. She had a bob of whispy white hair and skin the texture of shoe leather. Once it got some blood in it, it would be even darker than Salation's. Her eyes were a little foggy, and the intelligence behind them was still somewhat bewildered from both the soporific she'd been on and oxygen intoxication.

"Hello, sir. It's nice to meet you," she said politely, and we shook hand. I kept a hold of her afterwards and took her pulse again. Then I took a moment to glance at Salation.

As expected, she'd needed a few moments to get herself under control. Now there were no traces of her tears but a faint redness in her eyes and wet spots on her shirt collar. Yet her face was lined with nigh invisible traces of salt, and her red skin was a slightly deeper shade. Being naturally dark, crying didn't make her skin look splotchy. Instead she just turned a darker tan shade. She was blindingly gorgeous, and I couldn't believe the luck I had.

Her mother's pulse was steady. I'd known that already but wanted confirmation. "Now, I know a little bit about medicine, so please excuse me for being so forward, but would you mind opening your mouth? Thank you, ma'am."

There is a near mandatory period of poking, prodding, and staring into someone's head after a sudden recovery from catatonia. It's possible to avoid but unwise if not completed. While Salation's mother got her wits about her as I checked for side effects, I also took subtle care to ensure the raw essence I'd just funneled through her was doing its work and abating. There seemed to be no reason to worry. The stiffness of the old lady's lungs was gone. Her breathing was easier. There was no tint of the peculiar diseased taint on her chakras, and the natural flow of the bodily energy was good. I sat back.

"Crimson, I-" Salation began, and her voice was almost steady. I stopped her by bouncing my finger against her lips.

"Don't. But you may pour the wine. Not much for your mother, I'm afraid. Just a sip."

"Why not?" the matron demanded in a querulous but good natured voice. "I love a bit of wine."

"And a bit is all you'll get," I assured her. "I'm your doctor."

She frowned at me and looked seriously at her daughter. "Don't listen to this quack. Do what your mother tells you."

Salation gave an exaggerated sigh, and poured three equal glasses. "You know I can't disobey her," she pointed out seriously.

I rolled my eyes and admitted defeat. The old lady was going to be drunk as a lord halfway through that glass. The Dragon-Bloods of the Realm made the best wine in Creation, but they made it strong. Glasses were distributed, and we drank to Telitia's health.

"Are you hungry?" her daughter asked solicitously. "We've got some bread, some spiced meat, some-"

She stopped because her mother passed out and dropped face first towards the table. There was a smack as her forehead hit my hand, and that was a gently as I could catch her. I settled the old lady's head straight back, and checked her pulse and breathing again. Then I glanced over at her daughter, and realized the girl was in worse danger of dying via shock then her mother.

"That was faster than I expected," I admitted blandly.

"Well?" the terrified daughter shrieked at me.

"She's fine," I said, trying to sound reassuring. I could hear the old pulse, strong again, and the rush of blood through her veins. In fact the old lady was snoring very slightly. "However she's old, and now she's a bit tipsy. She'll sleep this off overnight, and be ravenously hungry in the morning."

"Oh, oh," Salation started sputtering. I stopped her by tapping her lips again.

"Don't. She's fine. She's just a little drunk."

"Okay," the daughter accepted. I handed her the bottle and glasses, which she took numbly. Then I picked her up under one arm, and took the tray in my other. With girl, food, and drink, I left the old woman to sleep and recover her strength.

Shortly thereafter in the kitchen, I set the girl down and placed the tray on the table. She poured us each a new glass, and we finished those off to her mother's good health.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize you could do that," babbled the girl as she tried to get her wits together. "And I can't thank you because you're leaving and-"

I cut her off again. If the problems she'd had with me walking her home from the mugging were indicative of her dislike of being helped for free, this was going to nearly break her. "Actually, there is something you can do. I don't have a place to sleep tonight. If you let me sleep here until I have to leave, I would really appreciate it."

"Okay," she accepted.

"And I don't intend to do much sleeping" I added, leaning in until my face was inches from hers. Her breath was hot on my lips.

She reached around my head and laced her fingers through my short hair. Our faces were so close her lips brushed mine when she spoke. "I can put you to sleep," she promised.

I pulled back, grabbed the bottle, and picked up it and the girl. "Good. We need to go bed."

She kissed me again, and she meant it like a drowning woman breathing in pure air. When I carried her to her bed, she opened for me until I lost the ability to think, and then pillowed my head with her breasts as I drifted to sleep. I wondered how long I could put off going to Murada.

In the morning I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the rising sun. One of the incidental perks of being one of the Sun's chosen is the ability to stare directly into the burning disk of my patron indefinitely. It was coming from the east, and reminded me of unstarted business in that direction. The chimney's of Lookshy were just beginning to send up smoke.

"You're awake early," Salation said. Blankets were wound about her supine form, and she slithered to rest her head against me. Once she could feel my back heat she closed her eyes against the sunlight.

"It's the sun. It usually wakes me up."

"That's why I have shutters, you know."

I smiled. "I like it. It's refreshing in the morning."

"Weirdo."

I shrugged, and slid my hand down her face to rest on the curve of her neck. "About last night, you didn't have to do anything," I said awkwardly.

"I was wondering if we'd have this discussion. Men are always confident to begin with, and then have doubts when there's no further point in them," she said philosophically while she started tracing the contours of my side. Her eyes were still closed tightly, and I shifted so my shadow covered her face. "You're leaving, 'Red. You're going away for a long time, and you don't know if you'll come back. I'm not happy about it. I'm very not happy about it. But I'm not not happy about it enough that I'm not going to be happy while you're still here."

"All right," I accepted that. She sounded confident, and her voice betrayed no doubts.

"Besides, you're warm," she concluded and wiggled to get comfortable. I stroked her jaw and went back to staring at the distant sun.


	8. Chapter 8

That morning I heard a very strange rumor. A corsair's hull had washed up on the beach not far south of Lookshy. Everyone aboard was dead. No one knew anything about the craft, but the name might have been 'the Killer Wave.' It had been spotted from a merchantman that morning, and a patrol was going to investigate tomorrow.

Without missing a beat I rose, dropped the cost of my meal on the table, and walked out the small tavern's door onto one of Lookshy's cobbled roads. Soon that road lead me to another, and then I approached one of the main gateways under the vast walls that encircled much of Lookshy. It looked clear, without nearly the lines and crowds that collected on the far side. Lookshy didn't care much who left but was terribly interested in who came in. I entered the flow of people and departed.

Outside Lookshy proper was Lookshy lesser. This was where much of the real business of the city that wasn't military related took place. Wild grass grew untroubled in a circle around the city, reaching out exactly one thousand yards from the walls. In this desolate area there were no tents nor shanties, and people were not allowed to stop on the roads. Only the clustering lines seeking admission had permission to loiter within the killing zone.

Beyond that, starting sharply at the end of the desolate zone, the outer city burst from the ground like a tsunami. Tents were piled atop sod houses in nodes around market squares where everything made under the sun's eye could be found. Anything neglected could be found in one of the sod huts, where the acrid smoke of southern drugs mixed with the herbal odor of marijuana. Soldiers stomped around, hassling the peasantry, while unarmored police equipped with batons and nunchaku tried to keep order. The outer city ran unobstructed to the Meander river north, and east until it hit the plains. Here was done the business that didn't require the complications of entering the city walls. That which was legal was done openly, and frequently involved transactions between middle men. Wood from the far north changed hands to travel further south in return for the contents of spice caravans. Beyond them all flowed the vast Meander, miles wide at this point. Nearing the end of autumn, the river was at its lowest level of the year, but the central channel was deep enough for the greatest of deep water frigates to pass without a problem.

The river itself was as riotously active as the grounds. Lookshy's river port was full of wooden masts, flying pennons of the great Gens. There was a forest of flags. Below them occasionally one could catch a glimpse of the low, metal decking of old First Age warships, built of steel and jade. They had a menace all their own, cleverly concealed beneath smooth flowing decking that passed under the surface of the water like turtle shells. Outside the naval port was the civilian port where no rhyme nor reason dictated the appearances of the merchant men. Much of cargo that was sold in the wild bazaar never actually left the port, and only rights and money changed hands.

Outside the port lay the dredged channels to the deep parts of the river. Even more craft passed by heading upriver than stopped. The bridges over the Meander were vast, and towered over the reaching masts that passed beneath. More than once Lookshy had entertained the idea of taxing the river traffic. The powerhouse cities of Nexus, Sijan, Greyfalls, Great Falls, and even the warring nations of Halta and Linowan had risen up as one to counter that action. The Guild had boycotted the city en mass for a week, while the lesser nations rushed to the banner of the Realm. The Realm had sent warships from the Blessed Isle who parked just outside Lookshy's territory. They were low, sinister warships from the old world, and lurked mostly underwater, barely rising high enough to impinge on the natural movement of the waves. Invariably Lookshy retreated from the idea, and commerce returned to normal. The city fathers were forced to console themselves with the taxes from customs men, food and supplies for the cargo craft, a share of every sale that entered or left the city, and a thousand other slight tithes that supported them in luxury.

I made my way west, towards the sea. The Meander went almost due west from the high eastern mountains, but right before it hit the sea ran north around around a massive pile of granite. A top that point was the true castle of Lookshy, and the city proper nestled in its shadow. I went south, away from the river, and came to a horse market.

Now another thing that doesn't impinge on my distrust of mental powers is analysis. I bear no moral dilemmas about discerning the truth of a sales pitch with lesser charms. The dividing line is clearly drawn if thin though. Only powers that reveal truth are acceptable. Such means that compel someone to only speak the truth I consider strictly forbidden. It's probably a hair-splitting distinction, but I stick to it.

It didn't take me long to find a crooked horse dealer, and enter into negotiations for a stolen mount. The man attempted to con me outrageously. After I deflected his every lie and bit of treachery, he offered to make a wager for the horse. Earlier that morning I'd waylaid a particularly successful young hoodlum, and had divested him of his ill gotten gains as I sorcerously encouraged him to depart his life of crime. I laid the loot against the horse and cheated better than the merchant could. Soon I lead the beast away.

The beast was a well trained racehorse. I had gotten it cheap because it had broken a foreleg some time ago and could now neither race nor draw a plow. I walked it around a corner and in a sheltered spot looked at the injury. The bone had partially healed but done so crookedly. This wasn't going to be subtle at all. I mounted back up, and rode the old animal at a crawling pace until I was several miles from the press of people. Along the way I collected several stray plants, the leaves and berries from several trees, and dropped them all into empty bottle of gin I found discarded in a ditch. Then I dismounted, lead it into a copse of trees and explained to the animal what I was going to do.

Not that it understood me, of course. But it got to know my voice, and that was more important. The dregs of the gin had saturated the foliage within, and now the bottle had two fingers of a black, noxious smelling mixture. I shook that up good and firmly, set it beside me, and then let the horse take a deep sniff. It at once settled into placidity. After that I crouched by the foreleg and lifted it into my lap. This confused the gelding, but it was too doped to protest. No one was looking, so I drew my sword and surgically broke the horse's leg with the butt. It didn't even whimper. I reset the leg, poured the toxic smelling concoction over the break, and hit it with some raw power to get the processes going. A few minutes later I rode my healthy, if tranquilized, race horse away and headed for the coast.

While the area was less densely populated than Lookshy, rarely was there a point between the river and the coast where one couldn't see a house. The fields on either side were well tended and organized in plots. Orchards interspersed cornfields, punctuated by the occasional cow's pasture. I set the beast's head towards the ocean and urged it up to speed. Then I encouraged it to go faster. It hit a ground eating gallop. I put my heals to it until it was dashing along, racing like it had on the ovals of its memory. With proper persuasion a racehorse will run itself exhausted at top speed without ever slacking. I just didn't let it get exhausted.

It was noon by now. In six hours the sun would be setting, and I intended to get back into the city by then. The gelding bore me across hill and dale like the wind, until we came to the edge of the ocean. Here steep hills ran down to the sea. The beach was black sand and narrow. I picked a way between the dunes to the thin deserted strand, and headed south.

Not far south of Lookshy the houses suddenly stopped. Trees grew wild and black. Their green foliage turned dark, like they were covered with an oily residue. I rode up from the coast to the line of ridges, and stared eastward. The blight spread out from the sea a few miles, beyond which is suddenly turned darker. Even in the early afternoon it was dark as deepening twilight. I considered the sea, and the shadowed land beyond.

Shadowlands were far from uncommon. If too many people died in suffering or torment, the mass of dying souls might strain the underlying foundations of Creation. The fabric of reality stretched and lost coherence. Then large areas could touch the Underworld. From thence could issue all manner of strange beasts, unnatural creatures, and deliberately malformed creations of the necromancy behind their undead masters. I had never heard of this one, nor anticipated to find it so close to the sea. The touch of salt was corrosive to the dead. The ocean breezes would carry salt water, and that meant the shadowland would be quickly eroded. Yet there it stood, almost abutting the ocean, and grim as night.

Taking careful note of this, I turned my steed back around and resumed racing south. For a while I hoped that this strange shadowland would fade before I found the dead ship I believed would be the Orca's Wave but such was not my luck.

When I found it, there was little doubt of its origins. Underneath the gloom of the dark trees, the brilliant orange stains on the hull looked diseased, garish, and unwholesome. They were undeniably left by the thriving corruption that fed on Lookshy's wastes in that tiny harbor. When I approached I could see that the bow did not bear a name. Yet a tattered flag hung in the sand, and it was blazoned with a killer whale rushing through a cresting wave. I dismounted and approached.

The ship had been driven far up the bank. It must have breached at a high tide. Laying on its side and tumbled over so masts pointed at the clouds on the horizon, the spars nearly touched the sand. Several low dunes rose over the level of the deck, and I crept aboard very cautiously.

Bodies lay everywhere. They'd been dead for a few days, and no one had tended to them. They must have died at sea, and the untended ship would have run aground before morning winds that raced shoreward. Most died from cuts about the head and shoulders, and small impaling wounds that went mostly down. The injuries were bloated with putrescence. There were some of my kind who could release the dead with a touch, incinerating the corpses so the spirit would be forced on to Lethe. Unfortunately, I couldn't. Under the eaves of a shoadowland I crept about the pirate vessel.

There was a panicked whinny, and the sound of retreating hoofbeats. I poked my head over the side to see the ungrateful racehorse fleeing madly the way we'd come.

"Thanks," I muttered and went back to inspecting the crew.

Most of them were men. They were big men, huge and muscular. Even the bloating of death couldn't have made them look this big alone. I went up to the pilot's deck and poked around. Here were dead women, somewhat more richly dressed. There were four or five of them, but it was hard to tell. The cause of death was different, though. One had been cut down, but the others had been eaten. Their forms were devoured to the bones by small predators, vermin of some sort, certainly no larger than rats. Only hair and clothing remained from outside the body. The eaten ones were simply skeletons, lying in jumbles against the railing. I stared at them, then examined the mound carefully.

They were jammed amongst each other, and I figured parts were missing from each corpse. They had died and been stripped of flesh before the ship had crashed. Probably several days had transpired at sea before the ghost ship had been driven to the coast. There was an eerie implication that the shadowland had called these recent dead to it. I glanced below deck, but saw and smelled nothing alive.

That the crew had been cut down by a mounted man with a saber was certain. That the captain, mate, and whoever else had been on the steerage had been picked apart, likely by swarming insects was also very likely. In addition it had happened at sea. One of the ship's boats was gone. Rowing to shore would have been unlikely, but not impossible. Rowing to shore with a horse, much less a great warhorse, was madness. The boat would have capsized before it had gone a mile.

I left the ship, and considered the sinking sun, coming down from the pinnacle of the sky. This was a time for fire.

Lacking oil, dry wood, or any other suitable element, I took myself a dozen yards up the beach and looked around carefully. Nothing moved except the wind and waves. I reached up to the heavens and called down the Light of Solar Cleansing.

Forsaking subtly in favor of being thorough, I opened the heavens until a beam of sunlight like balefire shrieked down into the hulk, smashing the wooden beams to splinters. Waves of immolation swept outwards from the point of impact, glassing the black sand, obliterating any trace of the dead pirates. Their bodies were consumed with the vessel. From the epicenter waves of burning light swept over me like a tide. They burned the oily residue from the trees, restoring them to verdant green. A white arc flashed out into the forest, filling the dark shadows with sunlight, and then a great wind from the sea roared into the stillness. Salt spray stung my face. It tasted pure, somewhat like tears, but uncorrupted.

After a moment later the beach was still. The glassed sand crumbled into white fragments, and the hills no longer had a grim aspect. Yet the sunlight was weak. It as wan and had little power. The spell took much of the sun's intensity here, which would not be replenished until dawn. It had also taken much of the strength from me. I tottered uphill and sank down.

Tired I whistled for the racehorse. It was out of sight, but my call sidled across the winds after it. It would come, sooner or later, or else I was going to be really unhappy. Then I drew my blade and waited, watching the dim forest beyond the coast.

I'd forgotten how much I glowed when I did that. As I sat on the sand at rest, I noticed that my skin was burning with an interior luminescence. Without a mirror to see I knew more forehead was blazing with the sigil of the eclipse, a ringed dot. Mine usually shone with an incandescent bronze light. It was the badge of my power that naturally emerged in the wake of sorcery. It was also terribly inconvenient, given the Immaculate Order's opinions on my kind, and prevented me from using my power most of the time. Only here, on this desolate swath of coast, could I use it with little fear of repercussion. Unfortunately that fear quickly proved justified.

Hooves crunched the crumbling glass. Thinking my errant horse had returned at my call, I turned and rose, only to find myself staring at a gloomy figure, outlined poorly against the bleak setting of the shadow-shrouded coast. It was the cavalryman on his black warhorse. In the strained light of the sun he seemed more potent then before, as if shadow was more his natural environment then night. The night was a natural time, where as shade was an exception to the law of the sun's brightness. The horseman was more powerful in such a refutation.

My blade rested easily in my bare hand as his did in his leather gloves. His head towered above me, and the well trained mount moved idly with the energy that comes before a fight. I felt a brief pang of sadness for the horse, for it looked like a natural animal. Beguiled as it was under the rider, however, it was a weapon, and an incredibly deadly one at that. It magnified his strength and speed while providing him perpetually advantageous terrain. The cavalry of Lookshy train their horses to bite and kick independently, and cover their rider's sides and back as best they could. If we came to blows the first thing I had to do was kill his horse. I felt bad, but there was no help for it.

"Come here, darkling. We have much to discuss, but little need of words," I invited him. The summit of my sand dune was narrow. It provided some slight mitigating advantage against his mount.

The officer smiled at me. He was well dressed in a neat uniform, well pressed with insignia of rank on the collar. His jacket was blue and his pants were green, no doubt purporting his house allegiance, but I didn't know Lookshy's heraldry well enough to read it. He didn't have spurs, nor did the flanks of the warhorse bear spur marks.

"Speak, dark one, or come within range," I ordered him again. He'd spoken to Salation. I knew his disembowelment at my hands hadn't eliminated that capacity from him.

Instead he grinned at me, and his big stallion sidestepped around my dune summit. I blinked, impressed. That required a lot of training. He circled me slowly, one complete revolution, until suddenly he began to back up down the hill. The stallion made grunting noises, complaints as the rider urged it backpedal. It walked on deep sand, though, and there was nothing to catch a hoof. Slowly, it began to retreat down the dune away from me.

Suddenly I flicked my glance right and left, up and down, behind the horseman and behind me. His countenance was cruelly gloating, and I suspected he was setting me up for an ambush. Yet nothing seemed overtly threatening but him, and he continued to retreat. I strained to listen, for fear he had some invisible accomplice, which all I heart was the quick, excited beating of my own heart, and the deeper pulse of the warhorses. Wind and waves thudded against the sand. The cavalryman had neither heartbeat nor breath. I pushed my hearing until the crash of waves was a cacophony, and still the woods remained silent.

The silent rider paused. He was some distance away, down on the flat part of the beach were tides routinely washed the beach flat. With dignity he raised his saber in salute, before he turned and put his heels to the stallion. At once it sprinted away to the north. Baffled I stared at him, then looked beyond to see if he was riding to meet up with reinforcements. There was nothing but the walls of Lookshy in the distance.

He might have intended to lure me off my slightly useful high ground onto the flat sand where his steed would provide him with the greatest use. If so, he succeeded. I dashed off the dune and hit the sand, bounding after him, whistling madly for that skittish racehorse. I cut directly towards the ocean, trying to get to the flat ground, when the sand underneath my foot gave way and I tumbled hip deep into a hole. Impacting the side knocked the wind out of my, and my blade flew a dozen feet to jam blade first into a dune. Sand all around me was collapsing inwards, but between the black sand were little bits of orange and red. I thought for a moment of the algae that coated the sides of the pirate vessel. Then I thought of southern elephant ants, ants that could grow an inch long, covered in multicolored hair to blend in to the savana. They hunted in hordes and could take down a leopard if they could get the element of surprise. Their prey they stripped to the bone, leaving only teeth and hair. I was in a pit up to my waist filled with moving sand up to my knees, and the sand was crawling into my clothes.

I shrieked and hurled myself up. Sand tumbled from me in all direction, revealing the myriad insect bodies as they bit their way through my pants to my skin. The huge bugs went through leather like butter, ravaging my boots, and the first of them latched its proportionately vast jaws onto my skin when I tumbled down on the sand.

My legs caught fire with pain. I rolled and ground my skin into the sand. Those still burrowing through my clothing were ripped off, but only a few of the ones that had their mandibles into my flesh were torn away, and they took whatever part of me they had bitten with them. I flailed and rolled, and saw that the sand was growing dark, like from a spreading oil spill, as waves of the creatures poured out of the sand. Around my dune a moat was collapsing. They had dug a pit all the way round, save for the path the horseman had used to come and go, and concealed it with black sand and their bodies. Now they swarmed out of the earth like a great living tide.

What was worse was their bites had a venom in them, and I could feel my muscles locking up. My legs were on fire, but flexed rigid, unwilling to bend. I couldn't get up and run, nor perform another vast leap. The tide of insects closed in.

I rolled into the sea. The first waves crashed over me, dumping salt water into the open excoriating wounds on my legs, and twisted me around. Vermin kept biting me, trying to burrow into my flesh. I got my head around and went face first into the next wave. That didn't push me nearly as far, and I paddled with the retreating water. Another wave hit me, and I got a little further to sea. When a final one crested over my head I sucked in a lung full of air, and plunged underneath. It tore be out past the beach, and over a steep drop off in the shore lead to deeper, colder water. I went down.

It was dark down there. The current tumbled me around, spinning me until I had no idea which way was up. Nor did I pay attention. I ripped ant after ant from me, crunching them between my fingers. The little monsters were huge, some the size of my thumb, with jaws a third the size of their bodies. If I crushed them they left their mandibles in my skin. If I ripped them out, they took big chunks of me with them. Soon the tumbling currents spun me in a red haze of my own blood.

That's when the sharks came. Water rippled against my skin, portending something big was coming, and I thrashed aside. A huge, pointed head darted through the water where I had been, mouth agape with rows of teeth. I convulsed to get out of the way and the mouth followed me. As it darted in at my legs, seeking the sieve-like holes in my skin where blood poured around insects into the water, I jammed my hand into its wide gills to hold the head away. It thrashed around me, stirring the water to boil, and another lunged in behind me.

Thrown about as I was my back darted down when the thing was going up, and I hit it on the nose. Its skin was like sandpaper, excoriating flesh, and it twisted. Moving to quickly to turn I got a glimpse of it as it came through the dark red stained water. Sharks have dead eyes. This one looked bright and cunning, flicking its black pupils around seekingly. Noting it hadn't shut them protectively in the moment of attack, I tried to gouge it with a thumb, but it was already past. In the turbulence there was no prior warning when the next set of jaws sank closed on my shoulder.

If I hadn't had to conserve air, I would have screamed. Instead I released the gills of the one and reached up. The shark skin was smooth as my fingers flicked back, in the direction water flowed around it, and finally I touched the cold, hard orbs of its eyes. At once it tried to blink for protection as I got my fingers in there as the pupils rolled back, away from the vulnerable area. That was a bit too late. Seizing it by the optic nerves, I yanked both its eyes out. It shook in pain, flailing me around in the water, and more of them appeared from the mists to bite at my legs.

Mad with either the effects of the power that dominated them or the simple hunting instincts, the ants were still burrowing into me. Running low on tricks and already drained of magic from the invocation the Light of Solar Cleansing, I was also almost out of breath. The shark had a tight grip on my shoulder, and its teeth were grating on my bones as it thrashed madly. It was flailing madly, not releasing its bite but swimming like it was trying to flee. It was acting on pure instinct, and briefly the cognitive dominance of whatever had filled it with the cruel cunning was gone. That meant it was swimming with dorsal fin pointing up. I flexed my black, swinging my rigid legs down, and that pushed the animal towards upwards as well. The fleet swimming predator pulled out of the rolling mire of blood and headed upwards. Some of the others stayed there, where the blood was still thick. The school was almost on the point of a frenzy. Other chased me and headed to the waves.

I slapped its nose, using a flicker of power to confuse its direction, and it broached the surface as I sucked greedily at air. For a moment the shark got halfway out of the water, flailing in primitive confusion at the lack of forward progress. Now I could see that it was a blue, somewhat more then ten feet long, and bleeding profusely from the eyes sockets. While we were in the air I held out my hand and screamed "To me!" Calling a blade is a simple trick. Agate came to my palm like a loyal dog.

We hit the water and I chopped the thing's jaw off, completely severing it. Instantly it's frenzied swimming pushed it past me. Some of the triangular teeth slipped neatly out, and some got caught in my flesh. But the beast was gone, and it flailed towards it's mates, chasing the scent of blood. They consumed it utterly, and I had a few seconds.

Now that I had air, a few more of my tricks became available. I caught a bit of foam, residue from the breaking waves, and heaved myself out of the water onto it. The bubbles bent with my weight but held. Suddenly I was completely free of the water. The breakers rushed around me, slamming into me and twirling me while rivulets of my blood pours onto the ocean around me. It confused and baffled the sharks below. They chased me in all directions, biting everything they could, and soon the horde was consumed with cannibalism. I gripped my blade and unleashed it on the ants.

"Death of a thousand spirits!" I screamed and blazed with essence. There was no further point in being subtle. The display of power raced over the sea, further confusing the senses of the sharks. Had they not been frenzied their guiding evil would have lead them directly to me, but now it just filled them with the desire to bite anything nearby. I unleashed a dozen strokes at the burrowing beasts. Few had gotten more than their heads into my flesh, leaving them obvious and vulnerable.

Like the blue sharks, they were controlled by some sentient evil. It was like a ghost, only more powerful and more mad. Yet it was limited by the individual power of each form it controlled, and each one I killed let loose a bit of power I consumed. They fed on me, and I on them. Each bit of strength powered me to attack again and again, until I'd eradicated the horde that had tried to consume me.

Still I was in the grip of the waves, and they pushed me back towards shore. Furious at the deaths of their fellows, the swarm I had evaded before now paced me on the beach, waiting for the tides to bring me in. Underneath the waves the spirit that controlled the frenzied school was trying to reassert its dominance. I did not have much more safety on the surface of the sea. I took a desperate look around to see where the cavalryman was. He was less than a mile up the beach, heading towards Lookshy at a canter. But my horse was coming, bashfully, from the hills. It looked embarrassed to have fled earlier. I felt savage joy.

I whistled like hell. The piercing note was like a lightning bolt through the equine brain, and it flung itself down the beach towards the waves. The ants paid no attention to it until it charged through their midst, but then there was nothing for them to bite but iron shoe. Almost at once it was past, racing knee deep in water. As the swarm tried to follow the breaking waves tumbled their tiny forms around, and they were forced to retreat.

A sharp nosed blue, insane with blood scent, lunged out of the water to my rear. I smacked it with the flat of my blade and pushed. The bier of sea foam underneath me skittered away across the water. As the school came under control of its guiding evil more and more lunged out of the water after me, and I beat them away with fist and steel. Now I was pulled along by the waves as well, thrown towards the shore. The racehorse matched my pace on the beach. I had not the grip on it to compel it into the water, nor would I have with the feeding frenzy in progress, but it could follow me along the shore. A blue managed to get through my guard and sink its teeth into my leg. Furious I ripped the animal from the water and decapitated it. The body I threw seaward and the recoil pushed me into the grip of the breakers. I was driven to shore.

On the crest of a wave I snagged the saddlebow. A couple good slaps got it sprinting up out of the water, and it left the immense swarm of unnatural ants behind, even as they scuttled across the sand in pursuit. Dragging myself upright I got into the saddle and took the reins. Binding my legs to the stirrups ensured I would remain seated, and then I set out in pursuit of my enemy.

He was less than a dozen feet ahead of me before he heard my approach. My dashing racehorse overtook his canting strider like he was standing still, and he barely ducked underneath my lashing stroke. That finally knocked the self satisfied grin from his face. He stared at me like he refused to believe I still lived. The warhorse reacted fluidly, however, going into a charge as its rider whipped his saber free. My mount dashed past his and I took a wide, looping curve to come back to him on the flat sands. We were each fighting right handed, and so directed our horses to pass each other on that side. My left shoulder was the injured one, and that arm could do little but hold the reins to reassure the skittish racehorse

His great stallion set itself. There was a moment where we were committed to our paths that even my nimble racer and his better trained destrider could not turn in time to avoid giving the other an advantage. In that moment I hurled my blade point first into his stallion's head. It passed through the skull almost without resistance until the hand guard slammed into the horse's skull. Instantly the beast stumbled and pitched forward. A gesture called it soaring back to my hand and into a vast circular stroke at my tumbling enemy.

He was good. Even from the crumpling charger he rolled to his feat and parried my stroke. Unfortunately for him my indestructible blade had yielded a few uniquenesses to my fencing style. Among them I had no need to protecting my edge. My blade met his, edge to edge, just above the pommel, and the dashing speed and power of the gelding underneath me did more to drag my weapon across his blade then my tired arms. Roughly halfway through the stroke I sheared through his whip-like saber and then his forearm behind. His hand, still clutching the broken sword, tumbled to the sand.

I dashed past and reined in. The gelding reared, and spun almost entirely on its hind legs, coming back down so I was facing my enemy. He was staring at his stump in shock. A sudden amputation has that effect on people. Like the chest wound, it had already stopped bleeding, and now ended in a puckered white bump.

"Now, creature of darkness, who are you?" I bellowed.

Shaken from his daze, he looked up at me. With that he sneered. Yet he said nothing.

"I know you can talk, you did so to Salation when you showed yourself that you might threaten her in her home," I told him. "Cease this taciturn obstinacy, and explain yourself."

He looked at me then with gloating in his eyes. With his good arm he tore away his jacket, and displayed the scar across his chest. After that he dumped out his pockets, showing me nothing but lint, and gestured to the dead warhorse's sides. I stared at him confused, before noting the saddlebags had been removed. The one armed man looked back at me, as if that had some fell import.

"Write it in the sand, then!" I snapped.

Silently he grabbed his own wrist, and without removing the blade from his severed hand wrote 'clock?' in the black sand.

He didn't have the clock. He also couldn't speak.

"That wasn't you?" I demanded.

He nodded, grinning widely. I spent a bit of my waning strength to tell truth from lies. There was nothing there but sadistic glee and honesty. Furious I charged him, beat through his hastily razed guard, and cut his body in half from crown to hip. As I bisected him the edges of his flesh caught fire like kindling. To be sure I glared at him until his body was a tiny pile of smoldering ash. That gave me enough time to cut my vest apart apart and bandage the innumerable small holes in my legs. Now I wore a shirt, improvised shorts, and stood barefoot. I had sharkbite marks on my shoulder and legs. The ant heads I left in because their death rictus had locked the jaws shut. That helped me stop the bleeding. After that I darted off towards Lookshy. It really was a pity about the horse though.


	9. Chapter 9

My horse, which along the way I took to calling Wimp, didn't like the smell of blood coming from me. Most of it had off in the ocean, but I didn't have the time to really clean up. Now I was constantly urging Wimp to stay straight. Only when his racing gait outpaced the wind did he stop nickering unhappily at me. He did like to run.

I made directly for the nearest of the city gates, and passed through the encircling lesser city without pause. Only when I was in the killing field did I look carefully at the pathway ahead of me to notice that there were more soldiers at the great gatehouse than I had seen before. Suspiciously they were dressed in white and blue. In addition they were comparing the faces of everyone who entered or exited the city against a poster.

It had taken them nearly two weeks to put my face on a wanted poster for breaking into House Haid. Now, after two weeks, when I could have left the city at any time, they were checking all people entering or leaving. That infuriated me even as I dispassionately attributed it to military efficiency. Lookshy was a military city, home of the Seventh Legion, with all the good and bad that came with that. The worst part was that as ineffective as it should have been, the method was going to work. I couldn't very well turn around and ride back the way I'd come now. My bizarre appearance would attract close scrutiny as it was.

_Rush the Falling Water!_ I prayed silently but with great insistence. _I'm at the Lion's Paw Gate on the south side of the city. I need to get through, and I'll need a miracle to make it. Do something useful!_

By the time I'd gotten that prayer out I was halfway there. The soldiers were waving at me to slow down, and so I did, dragging back on the reins until Wimp came to a walk. We approached the gate slowly, and headed for the express lane. I still had my bag of ill gotten gains from the morning. At a slow walk I could see that there were ten guards total, twice as many as had been here in the morning. My change in outward appearances should protect me from a cursory inspection, but when I got within the gatehouse itself it probably couldn't provide me more than a moment's anonymity. Not unless they were far more lax in their duties than I'd seen the soldier's of Lookshy before.

At two hundred yards one of the men watching the longer 'free line' suddenly broke from his post and ran around the arching front of the gatehouse. From my point some distance away I saw him make it to the moat in a slightly secluded point before dropping his trousers and voiding his bowels. Glancing back to the gatehouse, two more guards suddenly followed him. They scattered to different points.

When I was a hundred yards away, a second rash of illnesses swept through the crowds. It seemed one of them had not made it away from his duty point before suffering the sudden onset of illness. In reaction to the stench half other soldiers and a dozen people of the crowd were suddenly violently ill. The crowd involuntarily retreated fifty yards, and hands went to noses.

"Messenger!" I declared, as I passed the safety line and entered the area dominated by the smells of the gatehouse. People were boiling out the stairways in the back, fleeing into the city, as a miasma of sickness spread through the guards. Soon no one remained healthy, and the one soldier who kept to his post looked green as paint. His eyes were tearing against the revolting stench, and I must have seemed a wraith in the mist. I tossed him a dozen coins and rode past. He never compared me to the picture. I caught a glimpse of it from the corner of one eye. It wasn't a bad likeness. My list of crimes included theft, arson, assault, and vandalism, all of which I considered reasonable, but also breaking and entering, and blasphemy. I certainly hadn't broken in to the Haid estate the one time I expected them to know about, and hadn't performed blasphemy at all as best I knew. Had I not been holding my breath and nose I would have sniffed disdainfully. Instead I rode past and into the city proper.

_Thank you, oh wise, capable, and helpful Rush the Falling Water, god of beans. _I added silently. _May a thousand blessings be upon you, and our ventures to regain you worshipers bring success as well as bring fame to your name._ Then, after a moment's consideration I added, _I'm impressed, by the way. Well done._

Once I was past them I rode quickly through the city to the clockshop, pausing only to buy a cloak to conceal my injuries. Salation was unharmed, working in the window as she assembled some piece of artifice with painstaking care. She glanced up when I tethered Wimp out front.

"Hello. When did you get that?" she asked, confused as I entered her door. With her head she gestured to my mount.

"Earlier today. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Earlier today?" she asked in such a way to imply I should clarify.

"I told you. I'm the Bloody Baron of Black Cliff. I've come for your women and your horses, but you said I could only have one. So I bought my own horse, and now I've come for you."

She eyed me suspiciously. "I've also heard you were a horse thief."

"I am. It's what I steal while I'm kidnapping the women. Weren't you listening?"

She growled at me again. Putting aside the piece she'd been working on she walked past me to consider the lean racer. "He looks very nice,"she concluded, staying a bit back. She looked very nervous. "He isn't actually stolen, is he?"

"I acquired him legitimately," I assured her. Technically, I'd won him in a crooked dice game. "Sort of," I appended to tame my conscience. "I won him in a dice game."

"Did you cheat?" she asked pointedly.

_Yes. _"Well," I replied, carefully. "Let's say I was in a dice game and someone else was using loaded dice. Now it's against the rules to swap dice, but his dice were crooked. Is swapping the dice cheating?" I asked hypothetically.

"Were your dice loaded too?" she asked, still pointedly.

_Yes. _"But supposing, and this is all supposing mind you, that he had loaded is dice first?"

"Did you use loaded dice?" she insisted on the previous question.

"We're not talking about me," I reminded her. "This is a hypothetical question."

"Red, you stole the horse," she concluded with a sigh.

"We're not talking about me!" I repeated, waving my hands.

"Listen to me very carefully," she said as she turned from the horse to face me. She reached up and placed her long arms on my shoulders and took a form hold of me. For a moment she kneaded my back. "Get rid of it, right now. You are not allowed into my house with that animal tethered out front."

"They weren't even my dice!" I argued. "I stole them from him! He had two sets of loaded dice. All I did was switch his sets of loaded dice."

"Did you win the horse in a crooked dice game?" she said again, very slowly.

"Yes."

"Did you win using loaded dice?"

"Yes."

"Get rid of the damn horse."

"But I didn't cheat first!" I protested again.

"Red, I'm going upstairs to eat dinner with my mother. Then I'm going to bed, and then I'm having sex. If you intend to be present for any of that, you'll get rid of your stolen horse." With an air of finality she turned and returned to her house, slamming the door in my face.

"They weren't even my dice!" I yelled through her open window. She shut it on me, firmly.

Muttering to myself I turned back to Wimp and walked him off. I decided I never should have said I acquired him legitimately. I should have simply pointed out that I hadn't stolen him.

Not much later I learned that Rock, my usual fence, didn't deal in horseflesh. He had a cohort who did, however. I went to him and negotiated the sale as quickly as possible. After I was done I stopped by a chapel to the Hundred Gods. Technically Lookshy was an Immaculate Faith city, but only a few gens like the Maheka really cared. Either way anyplace as cosmopolitan as it was and as centrally located would have some influence from the other prominent religions. Besides, the Realm was an Immaculate Faith nation, and as I've mentioned, the people of Lookshy had opinions about the Realm. Thus the Hundred Gods Heresy, or simply the Hundred Gods for those less derogatory, had chapels here and there. I dropped the profits I'd made from my foray into horse trading into a general offering envelope and wrote'Rush the Falling Water' onto the lip. That should get him a few more services than the Immaculates allowed. As I was leaving I stopped, and considered the offering box for the hungry children of Lookshy. I sighed deeply. With that I donated the money I'd acquired by illegal means, which was all of it, to the hungry children. The wood carvings on the box seemed to be gloating at me. With that I returned to Salation's clockshop, worried that something might have happened in my absence.

She met me at the door. After looking around suspiciously she let me in. Once the door was shut behind me she stood with arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.

"Sold it," I replied calmly. "And donated the entire price to the poor."

"Are you sure?"

"Do I look like I'm swimming in stolen money?" I asked and spread my arms wide.

The gesture swept the cloak back, and revealed the shark bites, the gouging bites of the ant swarm, and the innumerable cuts and abrasions from rolling across crumbling glass. I looked even worse than I felt.

"You probably deserved it," she concluded.

"What!" I exclaimed.

"Well, it obviously isn't slowing you down, so it can't hurt that bad."

"What if I'm just enduring a lot of pain?" I growled.

"I doubt it. You never acted that tough."

If I didn't like the woman so much I would have strangled her. Instead I left to use her wash room and attend to myself as best I could.

While stitching shut my shoulder, I paused to consider what I was going to tell her. Our fight aside, I was expecting to sleep in her bed tonight. As soon as I removed my clothing, she was going to notice the injuries I'd taken. As I pulled a saw-edged tooth from my shoulder and matter-of-factly sutured the wound shut, I considered the bite mark. There was no chance it would be confused for anything but a bite mark. It was big, too. There wasn't much a chance she'd miss it. She hadn't noticed earlier because she was mad at me, but I didn't attempt to beguile myself she wouldn't notice later. Had I more energy I might have drawn an glamour around myself, but that would require I remain awake. When my shoulder was taken care of, I had a pile of shark teeth in the soap dish.

After that I addressed my legs. Most of the ant poison had been washed away during my swim, and that the rest had worn off during my near panicked ride back to Lookshy. As I pulled the remaining heads out and carefully stitched shut the holes, I noted that few of my wounds had gone above the knee, and none above the mid-thigh. For that I was very grateful. Judiciously I sent a prayer of thanks to the Unconquered Sun, my patron. With luck he wouldn't be jealous that the majority of my funds had gone to other divinities. The other shark bite on my leg wasn't as big as the shoulder wound, and I methodically treated that one as well. All that remained were the smaller scrapes from the glass and the abrasions from the shark skin, but those should heal quickly without care. I was considering myself in the mirror, ensuring I was as well tended as I could do myself when I heard a loud knock from below. Pausing, I slid the washroom door open and listened.

After a moment Salation answered the door. She asked, "Oh, hello sir. May I help you?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry to disturb you at this time of night, but it's very important. May I come in?" It was a deep, smooth voice. I'd never heard it before.

"Yes, sir. Please." Footsteps sounded from soft soled sandals as Salation drew aside, and then more, these from heavy cavalry boots, as the man walked in. My blade came to my hand unconsciously, and I crept to the top of the stairs. They'd stopped in the center of the workshop. Salation was locking the door behind them, and then turned to face the officer. Even lying down I couldn't see her face, given the steep angle of the stairs. The officer's back I could see perfectly.

He looked exactly like the one I'd open and then cut down. He was dressed in the same blue and green, sharp pressed uniform. Though his back was too me, his collar was emblazoned with the same ornate scrolling embroidered rank. At his side was a sheathed saber. I suddenly knew that if I looked into the street I'd see an identical horse to the one I'd killed only a few hours ago.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry to come on such an unpleasant errand, but I must. Do you know a man known as Stark Vision of Inevitability, or occasionally Crimson Wing?"

There was a long silence. Then very simply she responded, "Yes."

"Are you familiar with who he is?"

"No, sir. I'm not." There was a hidden catch to her voice, that even I barely heard, listening as carefully as I could. It was a the very quiet sound of betrayal.

"Does he come here often?" the cavalryman asked.

There was another long pause. This time she responded with a slightly louder vocal catch. "Yes, he does."

"Did you see him this morning?"

"Sir, I don't understand. Did he do something wrong?"

"Ma'am, Stark Vision of Inevitability is a horrible human being. Do you know he killed his last wife?"

Silent and crouching by the head of the stairs, I winced as my entire body was suddenly hit with a crushing weight. The motion sent spasms of pain from my injuries that I barely noticed. Downstairs Salation reeled as if struck. Footsteps, unstable ones, from her soft soled shoes staggered sideways, as she dropped into her work chair. The officer took a few steps after her and left my field of vision. I got control of myself and stalked a few stairs down until again the officer was in my sight, but she wasn't.

"That can't be," she said very softly.

"I knew his wife very well. There is no doubt."

Salation sounded like she was on the verge of tears when she asked, "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because he took someone very dear to me when he murdered Lemora. He took someone away I'd sworn always to protect."

Suddenly the tearing of my heart froze. My anguish suddenly ceased as it was supplanted by a silent, icy readiness. Salation's pain shifted aside to the realm of something to be dealt with later. Lemora did have bodyguards. They were all demons she had summoned and paid with the souls of innocents.

"Are you going to arrest him?" Salation asked. She was crying now. The tears wouldn't have started to spill down her cheeks, but they were building in her eyes. I could hear it in her voice. She was in incredible emotional pain, with her heart on the edge of breaking. The analytical part of my brain noted it was a carefully calculated, deliberately inflicted emotional cruelty that was taking her to the very edge of heartbreak. I left the shelter of the stairs, and stole down further. The man's back was still too me. One of his hands rested idly on his sheath. Salation was staring at the floor and her eyes were glistening.

"No, ma'am, I'm going to kill him. But first I'm going to kill you, so he loses what's most important to him too."

Her had sank to her chest at his first sentence, but froze and suddenly whipped up. His blade came lose in one, fluid motion, as he said, "Just remember as you die, that it was you who-"

Agate hit him in the side, just above the ribs, and I parted him from waist to shoulder fluidly. Knowing what I was dealing with now, I set his flesh smoldering at the touch of my blade. In fact, I hit him so fast that he was still drawing when I completed the vivisection, and lacking an anchor his arm spasmed wildly as it hit the ground. It thrashed across the ground as it burned.

Suddenly worried that even after his death the demon might succeed in hurting her, I stepped over the convulsing arm and stomped down hard on the flat of the blade with my bare foot. The flailing twitching cut into my sole, but got no farther. Twisting my waist I drove my blade through the top of the burning corpse until the hilt was almost through the floorboards. Then I turned back to Salation, who was staring at me terrified and confused.

"I've gotten into more naked sword fights in this city than anyplace else in my life," I commented blankly.

"Who, what, why-" she babbled, still with eyes full of tears, while she stared at me baffled.

I glanced at the severed arm and saw that the fire had enveloped all of it now, leaving a foul smelling pile smoldering on the floor. I stepped of the blade and knelt down in front of her.

"I'm sorry. I've lied to you, but only ever about who I am. I'm going to tell you now. Are you ready?"

She nodded, but there was something about her that told me there was no way she was ready. Still, I'd run out of time.

"My name is Stark Vision of Inevitability. You heard about the guy who trashed the Gens Haid manse? That was me, but I'll explain that in a bit. I'm a seventy eight year old Solar Exalted of the Eclipse Caste, what the Immaculate Order calls the Forsaken." As soon as the words started coming, there was no stopping them. Details flowed like a river as I leaped from big fact to big fact with little intervening explanation. "For three years, up until this spring, I was married to a woman named Lemora. We lived in the Meander Mountains on the very edge of the wyld. I was a doctor. She was a witch. I thought she did little beyond minor luck charms and wards against disease. I was wrong. She practiced a form of soul-binding magic where people's lives are bound to stones after they die. She then traded these souls to demons for favors. That," I pointed and the smoldering pile of wreckage that no longer even resembled something human. "Was one of the demons. She had married me so when one of my patients wouldn't make it, she would be prepared to grab them at the moment of death, and bind their soul. I killed her, ruined her magics, and released every one of the imprisoned dead I could."

The woman wasn't reacting to me. I don't know if anything I was saying was making it through. I kept talking, trying to keep my voice calm and level. It wasn't easy, but the words wouldn't stop.

"After she died I found an amulet with a bound ghost named Medor. At the time I didn't know his name, but only that he had lived in a kingdom called Aphor before the Shogunate fell. I promised to take care of his descendants as best I could after sending him on to Lethe. It seemed a good way to end the business with Lemora. First I went to Sijan, where I met an archivist. There was also a murdered ghost. From there I came here. At Gens Haid I was told that the archivist was dead, and that I had been framed for it. I didn't kill the archivist. I swear. But Haid and his minions attacked me, and during my escape I set his house on fire. That's why I'm wanted for that. Suffice to say I escaped, but I was naked. I found the alley where you were being attacked and intervened. I stole the muggers clothes and took you home. Since there were guards on the street looking for me I stayed with you for lunch. I always felt bad about that because I used you, which is why I wouldn't eat with you again for so long.

"Since I've come to Lookshy I finally figured out where I can find Medor the ghost's descendants, but I need to go to Murada to do it, and from there into the deep wyld. I found this out a couple days ago. But this guy, or another demon who looks exactly like him, killed the ghost and the archivist in Sijan and framed me for their murderers, and I knew that somehow they were going to try to hurt you, so I won't leave until I'm sure that nothing will come down on you because of me."

I ran over the relevant details in my head. I don't think I had missed anything important, but there were a couple of points I wanted to be sure I elucidated.

"I didn't tell you anything because I didn't want to talk about Lemora, and I didn't know if you were a diligent Immaculate. If you were you would probably have to try to kill me, or at least report me to someone who would. Lemora I just didn't want to talk about. I always felt really bad about using you that first time, but after that I kept coming to see you because I liked you, and I still do. Please don't hate me."

I stared at her at eye level, on my knees in her clockshop. She looked at me askance. Behind us the demon finally guttered out. Without looking I yanked the blade out of the pile of ash and banished it Elsewhere. Salation looked at me like she'd never seen me before and traced the lines of my shoulder with her fingers. "What happened to you?"

"This morning I was nearly eaten by a shark, after I was attacked by a swarm of possessed ants. Later I killed another demon. Actually, a whole pack of sharks tried to eat me, but they were possessed by a different demon. I don't know all the details, but they aren't important right now."

"Oh," she said quietly. She lifted her fingers from me and held her hands in her lap, where they started twitching involuntarily. I reached into her lap and very gently wrapped her small hands in one of mine. They grew still. "How things have you lied to me about?" she asked next.

"My name," I replied. I thought carefully. "And about being a horse thief, because at the time I'd never stolen a horse. I still haven't, but I did win one while playing less than honest dice. But at the time I hadn't even done that. I'm also not the Bloody Baron of Black Cliff, because I don't think such an individual exists. The alliteration just appealed to me."

"What about-"

"Absolutely not," I cut her off, and leaned in very close to her face. I was resting all my weight on the seat of her chair. "I meant everything I ever said about you. I also meant all those things I did to you. Like that," I added and kissed her. "And everything else. I love you, Salation, and if I wasn't Anathema and hadn't sworn to go rescue this ghost's descendants from the fae, I wouldn't leave you." I paused. "Actually, I would probably still rescue the ghost's descendants even if I had not sworn to. That's the sort of thing I do. But I don't think that's what you meant."

"It wasn't," she admitted.

"Good."

"But I'm not happy about it," she added.

"I understand," I accepted.

We considered each other from very close.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I'm probably going outside, because I think there is a demon in the shape of a horse tethered to the front of your house," I said seriously.

She blinked at me. I think of all possible answers, that wasn't one she was expecting. "Wait, really?"

"I'd give it better than even odds," I replied. "Without using loaded dice."

"Are you intending to put on clothes?"

"It's either a demon or a horse. Neither one cares if it sees me naked."

"What about people?" she asked.

"You've already seen me naked," I pointed out.

"I mean other people!"

"I bet they've seen naked people too."

"But they haven't seen you."

"Well, if they want to keep it that way, they'd better not look out their windows."

She changed direction. "What are you going to do after you go outside?"

"Figure out it that's a demon or a horse. If it's a demon I can just kill it, but not if it's a horse because then it won't go away, and you'll have a dead cavalry horse in front of your house, which would be odd."

"That would be a very odd problem to have," she agreed.

"Very," I emphasized.

We paused at this juncture. We'd talked a nice circle around the issue at hand. Now only a hair's breadth remained between our faces, and there was nothing else to say.

Very deliberately, Salation put her arms around me. She snaked one over my uninjured shoulder, and the other around a part of my side that had few lacerations than the rest. She deliberately pulled me towards her, and met me with her very soft lips. "I will not have naked men running in and out of my house at all hours of the night. Before you go outside, you need to put on clothes."

I took my arms off the chair and leaned in to her. Then my weight pressed against her, and I held her very tight. We stayed immobile for a long time, before I relinquished her to go find my torn and shredded clothes.


	10. Chapter 10

Outside was, as expected, a dappled stallion. It was tethered neatly to a tree. I tossed a little salt on it to see if it was a ghost, and the horse didn't pay any attention. Then I poked it with an iron nail I'd pried out of the floor to see if it was a horse-shaped fae. The horse gazed at me blankly, and one of Salation's neighbors who had stepped outside for a smoke started to watch me oddly. Finally I whispered a trivial banishing and made a sign of unsummoning against the stallion's rump. It tried to kick me. I figured that could go either way.

"Well?" asked Salation, from the door. She was crouched behind the frame, keeping her distance from the beast.

"I think it's just a horse."

"So what do we do with it?"

I stared at it perplexed. That was, I concluded, an excellent question. Then I glanced up at her and smirked a little. "Aw, you said 'we.'"

She hissed at me and slammed the door.

Now I was left with the problematic horse. I concluded that there was no reason to worry, as I'd disposed of inappropriately located horses before. After a few seconds to overcome its resistance towards riders other than its master. I mounted this one, road it several blocks away, and then dismounted and smacked it on the rump until it walked away. With that taken care of I hastened back to the clockshop and crept inside. In silence she let me in and shot the bolts behind me.

"Well?" she asked.

"It's been disposed off," I said seriously.

There was a deep whinny from outside. Salation stared at me. I wanted to swear. "You suck at this!" she snapped.

"I'm not a horse thief!" I pointed out acidly. "I haven't done this before."

"Red," she began, then paused. "Or Stark, I guess. You never should have lied to me about your name," she criticized me as an aside. "And how did you get the name Stark Vision of Inevitability? No parent names their child that."

"I was born 'Zug.' After I left home, it got changed."

"Zug?"

"Zug."

"Stark it is. Now, Stark, would you please go dispose of that horse?"

I had been thinking. "You know, there isn't any reason to panic. Its rider has been disposed of. Thus there's nothing to connect it to us."

"Except someone may have seen him enter the house," Salation pointed out.

"So? If anyone asks, tell them he left."

"And didn't take the horse?"

"Odd, but not sinister. What are they going to say?" I shrugged

"That I stole it!" she rebutted.

"And left it out front of a town house?"

"Stark, I'm already harboring a fugitive, you. Do you really expect me to have stolen property out front as well?"

I sighed. She was adamant about this point and refused to to listen to reason. "Fine. But when I come back, you're telling me what your problem with horses is. There's something."

"There's nothing. I just want you to get rid of it."

I eyed her levelly. She stared back at me firmly. With a roll of my eyes I stepped outside and took the stallion's reins. We walked through the quiet parts of the city, away from nightlife, heading north to where Rock's horse-trading cohort worked. A bit of luck came finally and brought with it a low fog from the river. More inquisitive people were inclined to remain inside and pay me no attention.

Soon I found the area of the warehouse district where this individual worked. Rock had called him Burrow. Burrow kept his office outside the military warves, near the city's private harbors for the rich families. Similar to the stained water harbor I'd been to before, these had less business and were controlled directly by their owners with little government oversight. In a row of large, blocky warehouses I found one in particular and knocked on the door. An eye-slit opened, eyes appeared, disappeared, and then the large door slid wide on well greased hinges. I lead the warhorse in.

Burrow was a lean, whip-like man, who was almost a head taller than I. His hair had just begun to go gray. He was still wearing the dark gray suit from earlier in the day. As before he was attended by a middle aged woman with glasses. She kept the money bag, and stayed at Burrow's left hand. I hadn't caught her name.

As I lead the stallion in, going past several occupied paddocks, I concluded that I was certainly leading the best piece of equine breeding here. Burrow and the nameless woman paused in their discussion to as I approached. I glanced around but Wimp was either already gone or somewhere else.

"What in name of the cursed gods is that?" snapped Burrow once I'd come before him. He stared at me in shock, which had turned to a sneer. He didn't sound pleased.

"Is this?" I exclaimed. "This is a pure bred cavalry horse. It's worth its weight in gold!"

"Weight in gold? It's worth nothing! That's a controlled item, a piece of military property. How am I possibly supposed to move it?"

"It will do that for you. That's what the hooves are for," I added snidely.

"You jackass. That, there is a weapon," Burrow snapped, stepping past me to approach the beast's flank. The woman silently took the reins from me and calmed the great mount, who was getting twitchy as people approached it from the side. "This, here," the lean man added, pointing at a dark red mark on the side, "is the iridescent brand of the cavalry. The damn horse is marked, and everyone knows that owning one of these if you aren't in the Lookshy cavalry is tantamount to an act of war. My contacts in Nexus won't take this, and they'll take everything else!"

"Sell it to the Realm," I suggested.

"And move from larceny into High Treason?" retorted Burrow. "No, thank you. You take this beast right back to whoever you stole it from and tell them you don't want nothing at all to do with it."

"Actually, I didn't steal it," I corrected absently.

"Right, you found it. Like the racer you acquired earlier."

With a wave of my hand I forsook that argument. "Look, I just want rid of it. I'll give it to you. Yours, for the effort of taking it off my hands."

"How hot is that animal?" he replied, angrily.

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation," I opined to myself loudly. I glared at him. "I'm prepared to give you the single most beautiful piece of horseflesh you've even had a chance at, and you're refusing?"

"No, fool. You're trying to give me the biggest problem I've ever seen. You want me to move my business from something barely tolerated but widely considered not worth the effort to shut down to a counter-government military operation that could get a stealth squad called in on me. I don't want that thing, I don't want to think about it, and if you don't turn around and get it out of here before anyone notices I may have something happen to you so I can turn this thing back in to the authorities myself."

"Too late," hissed a sibilant voice. With a flicker like a blink people appeared. Men and women in suits of white jade and gray steel flashed into visibility. Their armor was proudly emblazoned with a strange crest across the breast, similar to the heraldic crest of Lookshy, but as I looked closer I read Old Realm writing across the top. It said, "If you can read this, you are fucked." Two members of the squad appeared before me, and produced vast, two handed cleaving swords. I was already escaping through a wall.

It was one of those rickety interior walls that mostly exists to distinguish between rooms. I took it down with my good shoulder, knocking dusty furniture out of my way, and went head first through a window as waves of fire blasted through the hole behind me and the earth started shaking. When I hit and rolled on the paved road that side of the warehouse began to sag like melting butter. Several splashes of sea water crashed through the cracks while the boards of the wall sprouted buds before they caught fire. The road took me to an alleyway, and halfway through that I opened another door with my shoulder. This warehouse was similar to the first but was piled high with lumber. Given the display of elemental power before that was not ideal cover, but there was no help for it. I darted up a pile to reach one of the high ventilation windows and dove through that. Since it was already open that should make my trail fainter.

The window opened up forty feet above water the rear of the warehouse abutted. This bit of the harbor was between two piers, and was no doubt intended for the draft of ocean going vessels. The waterline lay twenty feet down a stone wall from the warehouse's ground floor. As I plummeted down outside, the far wall I'd entered splintered like thunder as my pursuers came after. Tumbling logs crashed about inside, neatly concealing the splash as I entered the waves. I juked and managed to hit the harbor bottom with my stomach instead of my head. It was pitch black down there, but I stroked as I could, staying near the well dredged bottom.

As my lungs began to burn I headed up until up was brighter than down. Then I kept swimming horizontally until before me appeared a great dark shadow. I passed under the merchant's keel and surfaced slowly on the other side. It took an act of will not to gasp and sputter for air.

This little harbor was enclosed on two sides by the high walls of Lookshy. They rendered it invisible from the lesser city. Behind me the warehouses rose to secondary city walls, but those had no gatehouses. They merely existed for times of war. Between the harbor and the ocean a great sea wall extended from the sheltering citadel. It rose no more than twenty feet from the waves, but across the mouth of the harbor was an iron portcullis that ran on steel rails. A strong prowed ship could ram that down, but would succeed in little beyond lining the harbor entrance with a jagged metal reef. It was a strong, defensible setup. I swam for the gate, hoping to find a way underneath.

As I approached the metal barrier, I found my way faintly lit by blue light. Pausing, I stared through the murky water until I saw two women, dressed in armor of blue jade, standing at attention on the bottom of the harbor bed. They were the source of the blue glow, and stood easily with the buoyancy of the water easing the weight of their armor. Realization trickled through my shocked brain as I realized that they must be water aspected Dragon-Bloods, and they were pulling guard underneath the waves.

I paddled hastily away, and surfaced in a dark nook to breath and think. Terrestrial Exalted, commonly called the Dragon-Blooded, were chosen by powers like me. However there were only a few Solars in all Creation, while the Dragon-Blooded numbered in the thousands. Their power and numbers left them the defacto rulers of the earth. Each was aspected towards one of the five elements, and from that element they drew most of their power. Water aspects could stay underwater for a while, several hours at least, so it was possible that they pulled guard underneath the harbor normally. It was also possible they were part of the net that the stealth-suited operatives had used to try to snare their quarry. Still, the water of the harbor was far from clean, which meant standing underneath the surface for hours at a time had to be an unwanted job. That should mean these two were low on the rank structure. Hopefully that meant they had limited powers. One had been facing inward and one towards the sea. I doubted I could slip past them.

I reached up and felt the rocks of the seawall. They were huge and set with crumbling mortar. The crevices between them were deep. I dragged myself upwards from the water and climbed nearly to the top. Then I peaked over.

Across the top of the wall were more guards. These looked to be an even mix of humans and Dragon-Bloods, perhaps somewhat heavy on the human side, also evenly facing the city and sea. I lowered myself back into the water.

If this was normal, the security of Lookshy would be nearly impenetrable indeed. Giving up the idea of escape beyond the walls I settled onto my side and swam back towards the resting ships.

First to mind came the sewers. Barefoot and injured, the idea of running through sewers hip deep in human waste posed little appeal, but the advantage that I would be very difficult to track silently. It got filed as a backup plan. Before resorting to that I wanted to know how many people were looking for me. If they had limited numbers, I might be able to slip past them. Less attractively but still plausible, was the idea of hiding in the water until the searchers departed. Dawn was about eight hours away, and the beginning of the work day would not be much further.

Ultimately I went with that. Sequestering myself in the notch between rudder and hull of a docked galleon, I found a way to wedge myself that I was nearly invisible. Thus I waited out the night, letting barely more than my head remain above water even in the shadows, and clinging to the barnacles of the hull to stay afloat.

Eventually the sun rose and dock hands came down to their labors. I abandoned my hiding spot and swam underneath a pier to the ground. From there I waited until a wagon was parked nearby, climbed up, and clung to the tongue. Eventually it left, taking me with it.

After exiting the little enclosed harbor, it was a simple matter to drop and let it pass over me. I hastened into an alley. Once it was well past I peaked into the street and glanced around. No one was looking for me. I ran for the clockshop and made it unharrassed.

"You!" gasped Salation as I stole through a rear window on the first floor.

"Me," I agreed and peaked around. No one seemed to have noticed my entrance from outside the house. Once I'd drawn the curtains no one would. Women were always filling their windows with curtains. Useful things when one was a fugitive, though.

"What happened to you?" she exclaimed. She had been going to the pantry for lunch, and there was bread and cheese in her hands. Now they hung forgotten in her small fists.

"I got rid of the horse. Can I eat that?"

"What?" she asked, and then stared down at her hands. "Oh, yes. Here. When you didn't come back, I got worried. I waited up all night, but then in the morning I didn't know what to do, so I opened the shop as normal."

"Good. That way there's nothing suspicious." I took the bread from her and started chewing on it greedily. "Somehow the authorities came after me. I spent all night hiding from them."

Then, because I saw no further point in evading the point, I asked, "Did you tell anyone about me, other than the demon I killed?"

"No," she said instantly. I felt bad for distrusting her, but I searched her words for lies anyway. There were none. "I haven't said anything to anyone about you. My mother asked me about you, but I said I didn't know where you were. She's been upstairs the whole time anyway."

"Well as soon as I'm gone, get her outside. The sickness should be gone, so there's no reason to keep her in here."

"So what happened?" she demanded curiously. I gave her the full story between bites, trying not to omit anything interesting. My own adventures always seemed boring and simple, but I'd learned others don't always agree. When I was finished, and my narrative had placed me before her, Salation stared at me, perplexed. She explained, "Last night I found a pile of teeth in the washroom. Do you know what they're from?"

"The sharks, by way of me," I explained. "Before the demon came last night I pulled those out of my shoulder and leg." Shucking my jacket, I pointed to the circular line of scars across my chest and arm. "You can tell it was a blue by both the size of the bite and the nature of the teeth. See these concentric points here? That means the fish had two rows of teeth."

Salation looked carefully at my shoulder. I pointed out the details of the stitching I used to close the wounds, which I found a lot more interesting then how I'd acquired them. It was more useful too. "You don't want to just sew the skin shut like a vest. Then you strain the flesh, and it doesn't heal quickly. See how the back stitch on each side reinforces the bind? That's the trick right there."

"You did this to yourself?" she asked. There was a slight lilt in her voice.

"Yes, last night in your washroom," I reminded her. "Getting behind the shoulder was a lot more difficult. I had to bend backwards to see it in the mirror. The stitching's also not quite as nice," I admitted. I never know if that comes across modestly or not, but it would be dishonest not to mention it. With the way the last day had gone, I didn't want to err on the side of deceit with her.

"Oh, gods," she murmured, turning white. With that she fled the room.

"The stitching's not that bad," I muttered to myself, a little offended. I craned my head backwards and looked at my rear deltoid. "Well, it might be." I reconsidered. My back looked like a small child's mad science experiment. Suddenly exhaustion hit me like a sledgehammer. The room wavered, and I had not the power to stabilize it. Yet there was something left to do before sleep. I found her in the kitchen, staring at the morning dishes she'd left to try on a rack.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

She looked at me and shrugged. It was a silly question. I continued, "How's your mother?"

"She's doing better. We talked for a while last night. This morning I gave her paper and a brush and she's been making prayer wheels. We sell them to the families of departing soldiers, and they ask the gods for blessings on those who have gone."

Well, that sounded cheery. I took it as a remonstrance. "Salation, I'm sorry. We have much to discuss, but I can't do that now. Would you mind if I went upstairs to sleep until you close the shop?"

"Yes, that's fine," she agreed blandly. It was the same bland tone she'd used when I'd told her I would be leaving soon, and as I got used to it I realized it meant she was leaving a lot unsaid. Had I the energy, I would have pursued it.

"Thank you," I said again. There was a short, uncomfortable silence in the kitchen, and very little noise from outside. Then I retreated to her bed and slept like the dead.


	11. Chapter 11

When I woke up it was pitch black outside, and every one of my danger senses was shrieking like a banshee. I was still in her bed, and Salation slept beside me, curled into a ball. We were very close but not quite touching. She twitched as I jerked upright, yanking back the sheets. I snapped a glance at the windows and the door to the hall. Both were closed and sealed.

Something was about to happen. Restored by what must have been twelve to sixteen hours unconscious, I let my hearing go until I heard the neighbors sleeping, and their children fighting in their rooms. Deep, slow groans emanated from the old wooden beams of the house, as the weight settled after the day's movement. My heartbeat was rolling thunder, but that of the southerner was deep and slow. She would wake up in a moment from my movement, but for now she was still entrapped in her dreams. The sheets settled slightly in the bed.

My head snapped down. I'd thrown them off in preparation to jump from the bed, but had not yet pivotted my legs. They didn't even touch the soft copper skin. I rolled my weight to the side and peaked over the edge of the bed.

The monsters under the bed had spawned, and now the floor was alive with a thousand black bodies, shot with orange hairs. The huge ants were creeping in under the door, and through the cracks in the walls. They moved slowly, and their tiny footfalls collectively made less noise then my racing heart and adrenalized breathing. As I glanced into the myriad horde, I suddenly got them impression the silent mass was looking back at me. Whatever overarching sentients behind them was like a hungry abyss with a thousand mouths.

I screamed, and six thousand tiny feet rushed into speed, throwing their bodies up the bed's legs. They engulfed it like a moving stain. I grabbed the girl with both hands and hurled us from the bed, springing across the room to the dresser, and slammed down hard, crashing into the wall with a deafening noise. Before the bed finished rocking from my exit, the mass had taken it over. The direction of the insect tide changed instantly, and they flowed across the floor to me.

"Close your eyes," I told Salation, as she gasped and looked around. Sleep sweat stuck her hair to her face, and she looked at me with the blank incomprehension of suddenly being awoken. "Do it now, and do not open them, or your mouth."

Then, perhaps more than any time before, I was tempted to use the techniques that force obedience in others. Still fuzzy with sleep, her mind barely processed my commands, and she stared at me confused. I reached down, and yanked one of her drawers from the dresser.

"Please. Now," I whispered, and without explanation lifted her and set her body into the drawer. Curled up as she was, she fit easily, even if the drawer walls barely covered a fraction of her. The drawer held brown and white cotton of a variety of shades.

She didn't argue. Scrunching her eyes tightly, she froze, clenching her entire body rigid. She even stopped breathing.

I threw her out the window. The drawer went first, shattering the glass, but fragments of it fell around her. As soon as she was out I was landing in a crouch, and the black and orange tide of ants was cresting the edges of the dresser. They were still silent, but somehow terribly angry none the less. I lunged out the window as well.

Before I've finished passing through I was kicking the frame, driving fragments of broken glass into my foot, but hurling myself down. I caught her moments before we hit, slammed my back on the irregular stones of the alley, but did not let go. Nor did I loosen my grip and let her head whiplash back and forth. She knocked the wind from me, but I paused a second on the ground. We were out.

"What is-"

"Ants. A swarm. The one that attacked me before. It's come for me, and it's in your house," I explained as quickly as possible. She opened her eyes and looked at me. Then we both spoke at the same time.

"My mother!"

"Your mother."

I rolled to my feet, set her down, and reached down to yank the shard glass from my foot. Discarding that to the alley floor, I asked, "Which window is hers?" pointing at the house.

"She's on the other side. Central room, top floor."

"Naturally," I murmured. "We'll be right back. Stay here. Run if the ground starts moving. They're black and orange and big."

"Like that?" she gasped, and pointed at the window we'd just exited.

I jerked my head up. The black stain of the swarm was pouring out the window after us, and spreading as it left the house to darken the wall. Their individual forms were indistinguishable, but the vast black shape gave the sensation of myriad internal movements.

"Exactly." I grabbed her, put her under one arm, and bolted across the alley, dashing straight up the opposing wall until I was on the roof. Then I got back to gain room for a running start and turned to sprint off the edge, hurling myself across the intervening space. My feet smashed into the tiles of Salation's roof, and broke through. I sank to my knees.

Ripping free I raced over the roof's peak with the girl still in my arms. She was holding on tight, making it easier to bear her slight weight, so I released one arm as I hopped off the far eave on the side facing the street. I dropped a few feet and caught myself on the wall, finding purchase by driving my fingers through the planks to the palm. There were windows on either side of me.

"That one, on the right," the woman said as I put holes in her house.

I swung away and hurled myself sideways, and broke through the glass with my feet. She sheltered her face against me, while I tried to block my eyes with my arm. Then we were through and rolling across the floorboards. They were bare.

To forestall any questions, I snapped, "We're being attacked by demons!" to the old lady who'd awoken as suddenly as our violent entrance. She couldn't bolt upright, but as her daughter extricated herself from my arms and help her, she got up. She was wearing the same cotton sleeping robes as her daughter. No doubt it was a custom they'd only adopted when coming to Lookshy, for even the nights in Paragon are hot. I left bloody footprints as I rushed to the door and peaked out. I didn't see the swarm.

"What next?" Salation asked me. She had an arm around her mother and was helping her get vertical.

"Normally I'd burn your house down," I admitted calmly.

"Absolutely not."

"Then we improvise," I judged. I could take out perhaps an ant a second. Maybe two for a brief time, and that would drain my energy far faster than the swarm, neglecting the unpleasant reality that I would be eaten long before I made a significant dent in their numbers. "Get your clothes; we're leaving."

"Where are we going?"

"Away from here. You, and your mother, don't need to be anywhere near this."

She wanted to argue, but the mention of her remaining parent stopped her. Without saying anything to me, she got a heavy robe and started helping the older woman into it. I stayed at the door, watching the hallway.

I felt deaf, even though the city's noises filled my ears. No enemy of mine had ever been this silent before. It took away advantages I'd relied on for years. Some taint of the swarm's occult nature must have touched one of my danger senses, giving me the prior warning I'd had. If the swarm had gotten to the bed, they'd have engulfed us both and there was nothing I'd be able to do about it. Fighting a sudden tinge of nerves I flicked my glance over the entire room, walls, floor, and ceiling. Then I noticed the planks of the roof were old and dry. A motivated swarm would be able to bore channels through there almost effortlessly. They had the numbers to cover the entire ceiling, and there would be no way to dodge if they all dropped at once.

"Ladies, we're leaving. Now."

"How?"

I glanced at the window, and then at Telitia. She'd just recovered from her sickness. Her body might endure the jolt if I held her carefully when we dropped.

"Same way we came in," I told her, and raced over to the window. Forsaking clearing the glass I ripped the window frame off the way, and negligently tossed it away. It sailed through the open door and landed half in the shadows of the hall. Yet as I glanced the shadows moved, and it was engulfed.

"Once I'm down, jump," I told Salation, then lifted her mother in both arms and dove outside. Once outside I twisted and spun, and dropped to the street. I hit hard enough that my cut foot splattered blood on the road.

"You all right, little lady?" I asked her.

"I'm old, boy, not ancient," she replied waspishly. I smiled and set her on her feet.

Turning, I could see that my girl was holding the window frame, with her head out watching us. I motioned and she flung herself after. It was an amazing leap of faith, possibly aided by fear induced strength, for she cleared me and I had to run to catch her. But once she dropped into my arms she was safe, and there were no bugs on her.

The hole where the window frame had been was better lit by moonlight on this side of the house. All the colors were in shades of silver and black, but the rushing shadow that spread from inside and scurried down the house on a thousand legs was unnatural even in monochrome. There was no denying it, and neither Salation nor her mother said anything as it rushed down the house after us.

Not that we stayed to converse, mind you. As soon as the engulfing swarm of elephant ants appeared, the three of us proceeded down the road with all due haste, stopping for nothing. Foolishly perhaps I expected the swarm to give up once we were outside. With the relentless malignancy of the cancer I'd expunged from Salation's mother, it chased us down the street. Now the numerous internal movements made it look fluid, as did the way it flowed over obstacles. Forsaking propriety in the name of speed, I lifted both women and ran off into the city. Soon I outdistanced it, but with every step I left a faint trail of blood from my cut foot. That might not even matter.

Had it been two days ago that I'd escaped the swarm a score of miles or more south? It had taken me several hours of hard riding to get back, and that was at unnatural speeds Wimp had only sustained through my intervention. How long had it taken the horde to get here? The walls would have posed no obstacle, but how had it found me? Gods, what threat had Lemora kept in reserve for vengeance on whoever killed her? This thing was horrifying.

"That swarm, that's the demon?" asked Telitia as I raced through Lookshy.

"Yes," I replied.

"Those are elephant ants. I've seen them on the plains where I used to live as a child."

"Know anything useful?" I asked, desperate.

"When we saw them, we ran. I once saw a bull rhino stumble into a swarm of them. It went down before it could flee a hundred yards, and later I saw them living in it's corpse like a hive."

"Not useful."

"They can even cross water. They make a nest of their bodies and float down rivers. It's something they learned from the ant gods."

Gods? That gave me an idea. I changed directions and raced to the Plaza of Voices Raised in Song. It wasn't quite midnight yet. Since I had skipped the last two meetings, Rush the Falling Water might not be there. That meant I would probably have to kill him.

That line of thought proved unnecessary, for almost immediately after I arrived the divine personage appeared from the fountains as usual. He looked even younger than he had before.

"Stark Vision of Inevitability, I greet you," he said formally.

"'Evening," I replied hastily.

"I thought your name was Crimson Wing?" Telitia asked me.

"I lied," I replied evenly, cocking my head towards her as I put the two women down. "Ladies, this is Rush the Falling Water. He's a bean god, but shortly will be lord of the children of Aphor once more, provided our mission succeeds. Rush the Falling Water, this is Salation, clock maker of Lookshy, and her mother Telitia."

Telitia stepped away from me and smoothed down her robe, rumpled from the traverse of the city, but Salation did not leave my side. After I'd put her bare feet on the ground she leaned into me, and slipped her arm around my shoulder.

"Salation, bow in the presence of a god," chided the woman, doing so as she spoke. Her daughter ignored her instructions, and held on closer to me.

"Thank you for your respect, woman," replied the old god, pleased. "You are correct, and you have my blessing for it. But if your daughter is the consort of this man, then she need not make obeisance. He and I are bound together in ways that overturn normal etiquette."

That wasn't entirely true. Rush the Falling Water was bound to me by hope and desperation, but I was bound to him only so long as I let my promise bind me. As it had been demonstrably proved, I was something of a liar. Still, I said nothing, more interested in seeing how Salation reacted to being called my consort. She didn't. She simply watched the god cautiously.

"I have a problem," I said, after it was obvious that the girl wasn't going to do anything. That might be a silent acceptance of the title, but it also might mean nothing. It was a topic for later consideration. "There is a horde of demonic southern ants chasing me through the city. I can deal with them, but require you to watch these two. They must be protected at all costs."

"This is twice now you've come to me with problems," the god pointed out.

"Bean god, how did you like those unanticipated prayers and services?" I snapped.

Rush the Falling Water lifted his hands pacifyingly. "I only meant to point out that when I take care of this one as well, you should be respectful. We are tied together, you and I. I will, of course, provide any service I can."

That might have been what he was going to say or might not. Still, he was right. He had been helpful and did deserve some respect. "Then I am justly chastised," I said, giving him a head bow. "You are correct."

"Thank you," he replied. Then, with grace he added, "And those services were the sound of heaven's nightingales to my ears. Please, let me take all three of you to sanctuary. There you can rest, and when you set out to negotiate this problem, you will need no fear for those I will protect."

"Please," I agreed, and nodded again. He made a welcoming gesture towards the fountain,and then sank into the babbling waters. In the night the plaza was suddenly still, broken only by the sound of the fountain singing near silently to itself.

Both ladies looked at me. I shrugged and released the one, walking over to the water. There was an indefinite shine to the water, a luminescence like starlight in fog. Reaching back I took Salation's hand, completely wrapping her fingers in mine, and purposefully walked into the fountain. Before my foot touched the water I was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

On the other side was a small square of a paved courtyard with edges that vanished into a white mist. About the square were arranged tables and chairs, like a seating area for an outdoor restaurant, but the air was full of an ethereal music. It was the melody of the fountain, and the rhythm that pervaded the voices of every choir who gave song in the plaza. It was beautiful and indistinct, hovering on the outside of hearing. Between the tables ran an elaborate arrangement of water and basins, similar to the fountain and the source of the music. Where the fountain in Lookshy had been small and circular, marked by a single sculpture that poured water from the internal mechanisms, this one was sprawling an elaborate. It ranged across the ground, made of complex watercourses that endlessly sounded the music of the spirit of the place. Lit like from the sun behind thick clouds or by a multitude of torches in thick fog, the sanctum was brighter than the night on the far side but not unpleasant for our darkness-adjusted eyes.

With Rush the Falling Water, who was visible from the torso up from a reflecting pool, was the spirit of that place. Both literally and metaphorically, the spirit was both the air and feeling of the physical plaza while also wearing the music like a robe with the sights as its hair. It was faint, bearing little outline, but seemed to beckon us to chairs. We seated, and the music swelled faintly.

"The Plaza has little power," the bean god told me, "but is fed much from the simple prayers and fond wishes of those who visit her. Thus within her slight purvey she is quite potent of simple things."

"Then, spirit, thank you for welcoming us into your home. Your hospitality is great, and we appreciate it well. We will not forget this."

The music tinkled cheerily, but there was no other response. I waited a heartbeat, wondering if food and drink would appear at the table, but that did not happen. It was most likely beyond the nature of our ethereal host. Yet the place was pleasant, and the air was safe. I felt only gratitude that we were here at all.

"You consort with gods, and speak with them as equals?" Salation asked, looking around.

That wasn't true either. I spoke to most gods as inferiors, but that required a bit of explanation before that came across as blasphemous arrogance. To be honest, it was that blasphemous arrogance that had been the undoing of the god-kings of old. They who had raised the pillar atop which stood the gateway to heaven had lorded their power over the world. Sometimes I felt the seduction of that arrogance, and knew if I was aware of it, it must influence me when I did not notice.

"Sometimes," I replied, hoping if my response wasn't modest at least it wasn't conceited. "But there are many beings of vastly greater power than me. Greatest of them is my patron, the Unconquered Sun, and while few creatures have attempted to treat him as an equal, that ends badly, and in cataclysm." That was a silent nod to those departed god-kings, my antecedents. Added as much for me as for them, it reminded me that arrogance wasn't just a social flaw. Salation was looking at me strangely, like she had no idea who I was. The expression I was getting from her mother, however, was dark and full of suspicion.

"Lad, I'm coming to suspect certain things about you that make me, as a dutiful scion of the Immaculate Faith, quite unhappy," she said pointedly.

"Oh?" I asked, and suddenly turned a meaningful glance at her daughter. Clearly there were things that she had neglected to tell me as well, not the least of them being her mother might well feel religious obligations to kill me.

"Mother, I-"

"No, don't leap to conclusions. But I think it would be wise if we talked about other things."

That was an excellent idea. "You aren't hurt, are you ma'am? Or you?"

"I feel better than I have in years," the old lady replied, with a hint of relief in her voice.

"No, I'm fine. Tired, but fine," Salation concurred.

"Let me provide food then, and something to drink," Rush the Falling Water offered. From a place indistinct he produced a platter of sautéed beans, and glasses of a milky wine. We tried a bit of the first, and found it excellent. The later was as well. It had smooth vegetative flavor that was very faint but had been spiced with nutmeg. We ate and drank for a while, and talked of nothing that might involve religion or politics. Unfortunately that precluded any discussion of the demon who assailed us, however.

That was brought into sharp relief when the song that filled the small square world we inhabited turned suddenly discordant. I leaped to my feet and rushed to the great, central fountain, that stood where the small fountain had in the plaza, but was in all ways greater. The sculpture was more elaborate and poured water from a dozen flutes and horns, while the rippling waters outlined the shapes of static notes of singing. Now there was a shadow on the water that flowed back and forth, slowly spreading oily black patches across the surface. The water stilled, and the music grew quieter.

"It's trying to get in," Rush the Falling Water said for the benefit of the two women. Then in reassurance he added, "But it will not succeed."

"Not for a while," I said, staring down. Through the rippling water I could see little, but with the images of Telitia's memory of the ants in my mind knew what would be happening. "It's spreading across the water, trying to bring enough ants to bear that it can force the gateway. But they traverse the water by clinging together. The moving water of the fountain breaks up their clusters. Eventually enough of them will get sucked into the water intakes to plug the jets. The fountain will stop, and the swarm will bring its numbers to bear. Then it will come."

"Even here, in sanctuary?" asked Salation. She glanced at the musical spirit, who sat very still. The singing was not much louder than breathing.

"Once the fountain stops, the noise it makes will stop as well. Then the spirit's power will be reduced. Meanwhile the swarm demon will lose only a few of its number," I explained. Then I shrugged. "Don't worry about it. Once it passes through, I'll take care of it."

I looked at Telitia, a calculating stare that she met head on. Her daughter paused on the cusp of asking how the new menace would be mitigated at my exchange of looks with her mother. The old woman shrugged. We both knew who had what cards in their hands. It would be easiest not to say anything.

While I alluded to this before, no amount of hyperbole could exaggerate the hostility the Immaculate Faith had for my kind. It was made all the worse by the justification behind it. My antecedents, those mad beings who ruled the world in the name of the Unconquered Sun but with little regard to his edicts or commandments, had done everything that the Immaculates listed as their crimes. In fact they had done more and in ways that few now had the power to understand. Musical instruments which played melodies wrought from human suffering were the tip of an iceberg that extended vast and horrifically under the waters of history. I know this because I remember it.

That which makes me one of the Sun's chosen and has exalted me to the powers I possess isn't a singular act of divine will. It is a thing, referred to as an Exaltation, that binds itself to a mortal. Gods make much of this point, and it is the reason that Rush the Falling Water initially referred to me thusly. So far as I know, no power can or has ever been able to separate an Exaltation from a soul. There are reasons for this I'll explain later, to avoid bogging down my current narrative. In theory these Exaltations seek out mortals of a suitable nature. It is an autonomous process, initiated by the patron but undertaken and conducted exclusively by the Exaltation itself. Ideally the Exaltation I've received seeks out mortals who fit its peculiar nature, and then transubstantiate their nature into beings vastly more than gods. Thus my power chose me and attached itself to my soul. With it came some of the memories of those souls it attached itself to before, some of their knowledge and some of their failings.

Thus I'm terrified of entering into the fallacies of my predecessors. I already have doubts about the guiding controls of the Exaltation, because I received one of the Eclipse Caste. I'm supposed to be a diplomat. While some of the knowledge that came with the Exaltation is conducive to that, it's all the overwhelming, mind blasting power that has the subtlety of a broadsword and twice the ethical concerns. Instead I find myself solving my problems with Agate or my feet and baffled about how I'm supposed to talk my way out of being judged Anathema by Salation's mother when I unsummon this demon with magic from the old world. Add to this that I know the joys of ruling a kingdom of willing slaves and exactly how to go about doing it again. I also know the words of power that deprive men of their wills. Worse, I know I'll like it.

"Are you sure you can stop it?" Salation asked me, looking at the oily covering of the water.

"One way or another," I replied evenly.

"You sound like you're expecting a problem," she pointed out.

"I am," I agreed. Then I turned, and considered her mother as she sat, eating the meal provided by the poor god. "Don't worry. There shouldn't be an obstacle to dispensing with the demon, but the nature of the solution isn't quite as discrete as I'd prefer. Why didn't you tell me your mother was devout?"

"I said I didn't tell anyone about you," she explained defensively. "And we haven't haven't had time to talk with the horse business."

"I thought you hadn't told her about me for normal reasons that had nothing to do with my nature and the faith."

"Like you being a multiple felon?"

"Yes, like that."

She rolled her eyes at me. I scowled back, and then the both of us noticed the song of the plaza was fading rapidly. Glancing down the surface of the water was completely black, and flat as a sheet of lead. Only peering very closely rendered visible the tiny movement of the thousands of little legs that must be treading th water. I withdrew from the central fountain to get some working room.

"Why don't you go take your mother to the far side of the square? Give her an excuse to not see what I'm about to do. It will also be safer."

"You said not to worry!" she exclaimed.

"Don't worry. Just get back," I replied vaguely.

With a look at me that was mostly annoyance hiding a core of worry, she retreated to where Telitia sat. They relocated to the far end of the plaza. Salation sat so she could see what was about to happen causing her mother to put her back my way. I smiled at them, and then returned my concentration to the fountain.

"Can you banish it?" Rush the Falling Water asked.

"Almost certainly. My problem is that if I don't use a powerful enough banishment I'll fail and won't be able to try again for five days. However the more powerful spells have side effects like geysers of power and pools of radiant light which with reveal our location to anyone with eyes to look and some idea what they mean. I'd rather not dispense with the ant demon to find a Wyld Hunt bent on ridding Lookshy of the Solar menace, by which I mean me."

"Stark Vision of Inevitability, may I ask what difference it makes? I understand you must protect the woman, and will remain here until you do. I do not criticize you, and will aid that as I can. But once this thing is destroyed, do you not intend to leave Lookshy anyway? We have places to go, and the sooner we go, the sooner you can return." The god's words were diffident, but under them was a harsh edge of logic.

I sighed. Instead of directly answering I said, "I will make sure that no other demons come after this family due to my presence."

"Of course. But then?" he asked. His question covered his point well.

I nodded to him and accepted his words. "Very well," I conceded. "You mean to tell me there's no reason to be discrete any more? I'm convinced."

Suddenly concerned, Rush the Falling Water backpedaled, "I don't mean that exactly-" but got no further for I had hauled down the purifying lightning of the Sun into that sunless place.

"Immolating Fist of Wrath!" Solar flares came to my call, ripping through the gateway to the plaza and immolating the demon that lurked in the threshold. As the gateway was still partially intact, much of the blinding sorcerous plasma reflected back in to the sanctum. The white light burned up to a mandala of the Unconquered Sun's victory over the demons in the War of Ascension and reflected back. Moving at the speed of magic the coruscating fire bounced between my impenetrable barrier and the gateway, leaking demon banishing magic across the border with each reverberating impact. It only took a matter of seconds. Then the sanctum was very still.

"Stay here and guard them. I'm going to make sure this is complete," I told Rush the Falling Water, who's semi-material form was wavering in the aftershocks of the most power demon annihilations ever devised. To give the devils their due, the god-king Solars of old had invented some excellent magic. Then I stepped through the gateway with sword in hand, looking for a fight.

The Plaza of Voices Raised in Song was deathly still. Birds and crickets in Lookshy made no noise, no carriage wheels clattered on the paved streets, and the ring of horseshoes was gone. Even the tinkle of water in the fountain had ceased. The effects of the magic were gone, and there was no trace of it any more, but I wondered how eventful the casting of that spell had been on this side.

With a bang someone threw open a window and cried, "What was that!"

"Light of Venus," I called back, hopping off the lip of the fountain to search around for traces of demons. Not finding any, I noticed the rocks were glowing slightly, and the water shimmered as if it had confined rainbows within. With a burst of spray the child sculpture spat a stream of pure water into the air. I stuck my fingers in and licked it. The water tasted like new sunshine breaking into a shuttered room.

The demon had been eliminated with such vehemence that after a few moments of searching there were no insect carcasses to be found. By then people were appearing, looking into the plaza with wonder. I exited via preexisting hole in a wall and crossed Lookshy, heading towards the clock shop.

It was as we'd left it. I went around back to climb in the second story window that no longer had a pane, and poked around. Continuously I sent paranoid glances up at the ceiling and listened for the near silent traces of insects burrowing but found nothing. Leaving Salation's room I crept down the hallway and upstairs.

Here I finally found traces of the beasts. Underneath the window frame I'd tossed down the hall were several crushed insects. They didn't look that big until you realized that each one represented thousands more, and their jaws were a third the length of their bodies. Phantom pains in my legs reminded me how easily they could chew through flesh. I twitched, and flicked my gaze over the ceiling again. Nothing was there.

I ran downstairs to Salation's workshop where she also displayed her finished pieces. Poking around yielded me some a glass bottle. I filled it with water and returned upstairs to scoop a few of the ants inside with a knife.

"Now, you little monsters, show me whence you've come," I ordered and breathed a little essence on them. At once they swirled around the jar, filling it with reflections, until it seemed a whole swarm was confined within the glass. They rushed about inside, and I turned and twisted the bottle, trying to get a decent look.

The reflected swarm was scuttling along an indistinct gutter, like any of those that filled the city. There would be no way to determine where. I was pleased to see that the swarm was much smaller, less than a hundred of the things had survived. They were running away and soon passed underground. The bottle went dark. When I held it close to a candle, I saw only the few dead ants I'd put there, floating with neutral buoyancy in the water.

I went to one of the city gates. They were still checking for me, but it was late and the guards were paying little attention. I attached myself to the underside of a poorly searched wagon and bypassed them without more difficulty. Once outside I loped into the lesser city and found the crooked horse dealer.

"Evening," I said happily, as I walked into his tent.

"You bastard!" he said, concealing the joy he had at seeing me with profanity and threw something at my head. He missed, which must have meant he liked me.

"I need another horse," I told him.

"You're paying for it with money!" he snarled back.

"All your horses are stolen to begin with," I snorted.

"They're fine animals!"

"Fine stolen animals," I corrected.

"You're paying with money!"

He seemed very excitable. I nodded and left his tent, walking around back to the fenced pen where he kept his animals. The horsedealer staggered after me. I think he was a bit tranquilized, because he was having some trouble walking. I kept going through his animals until to my surprise I found Wimp.

"You found my horse!" I observed, delighted.

"It's my horse," he argued.

"No, this is the one I won from you before. Remember?"

"That cannot be. That horse had a bad leg."

"You sold me a horse with a bad leg?" I asked pointedly.

"I sold you nothing. You cheat at dice!"

"So then you don't know how you got my horse."

"That's my horse," he repeated.

I took a few steps back and whistled. Wimp, remembering our trip to the beached ship, walked over to me placidly.

"You're whistling at another man's horses. You could be hanged for that!" the horsedealer threatened.

"I think that only applies to women, and only in the south," I replied.

"Well that's fine, because here this is my horse."

I ignored that. "Supposing that regardless of who owns the horse now, this animal is the same one that changed hands between us before. You will notice between then and now his leg has been healed. Now if that could happen once, it could probably happen again, and since I believe most of the rest of your animals are sicker than a leper colony, I think that would significantly increase their reseale value. Perhaps beyond the cost of this one animal, who's still mine anyway."

"What exactly are you suggesting?" the drunk, crooked horsedealer asked suspiciously.

"Give me back Wimp, and I'll cure these five animals around me," I offered, pointing at a few who had conditions I could readily discern.

"You a Dragon-Blood?" he asked.

"No."

He waited for further explanation. I didn't give him one.

"Fine, do it," he decided.

We parted ways again shortly. I had an idea where the swarm was heading, and rode hard to the south, heading for the site of our last meeting. When the bottle revealed the demon had broached the surface the background was shadowed stone, flecked with a rippling pattern of light. I stared at it baffled for a few seconds before realizing the rippling light must be dawn reflecting off water. The stonework was a bridge. For several minutes a hundred ants scuttled along the underside of a bridge, meaning it would be vast. They were heading north, crossing the river. I had been completely wrong.

At once I wheeled Wimp around and gave him the lead. He took it with joy, setting into an endless racing pace that only together could we achieve. Soon we were passing other riders who stared at the dashing racer that was only flecked with foaming sweat. I stayed low with my face against his neck.

Unfortunately it was haste that gave us away. As we passed Lookshy several hours behind my demonic quarry calls rang out. Soon a dozen men were dashing after my on fast horses. With the words of the god in my mind forsake any discretion. I turned Wimp's head to the water and whispered encouragement into his ear until the beast was in a mad haste. Like a bolt he descended the gentle bank and thundered into the spray. His hooves struck the water and found purchase on its surface. Furious the Lookshy cavalry plunged into the river up to their warhorse's chests, and then surged back and forth in frustration as we charged across the blue expanse. It took but moments. Then we ascended the far bank and fled on the far road, not stopping until we were far out of sight.

That they would come after us was certain, but our lead was significant. They would lose time fighting the traffic on the bridge, which under the best case would still be a detour. Thus once we were a few miles up the road I paused to consult the small bottle.

The predatory ants were crossing leaves and roots, scuttling over shadowed ground. It was certainly a forest, and a dense one. Now I was presented with a new problem. Though Wimp could bear me ten times faster then they, I had little way of knowing where they went. Between Lookshy and Sijan was a hundred miles of mostly settled farmland, full pf places for the swarm to rest and hide. With a new hive it was even possible they could replenish their numbers.

Worse, it was possible they could do so without. The swarm was bound together by magic, guided by a demonic intelligence of pure malice, and might very well ignore any law of nature. That it was limited was a certainty, for otherwise it would have replenished itself immediately, but whether that implied it could not recover at all, or simply needed some condition was unknown. The swarm might just need a place to rest and hide.

I had no more time to consider it. Soon the riders of Lookshy would arrive. I turned down side roads and made for distance, taking a weaving path, switching roads often, and did what I could to make my trail unintelligible. What I couldn't do was simply occultly eliminate it. Those techniques were possible, but I didn't know them. Thus relying on mundane trickery and Wimp's endless stamina, I made a snarled knot across country once more.

Unfortunately I was not the only one with unique powers. After six hours of riding through hill and dale, muddling my tracks in those of farmers and goat herders, I looked back and saw six men riding along, their leader bent low over his saddle. They were less than an hour behind me. It did not seem humanly possible. It probably wasn't.

If the pursuit was being lead by one of Lookshy's Dragon-Blooded trackers, he would be able to follow a falcon through a snowstorm. It left me with two choices. Ride hard north and hope I could outrun him, or take them out. I considered the bottle. The swarm was out of the forest now, scuttling under beating stalks of wheat. They could be anywhere. I turned Wimp around and set him towards the pursuit. It was time to end this violently.

The road dropped into a dell and was bordered by high walls enclosing fields and pastures. Between them it resembled a ravine. On my initial pass I had detoured suddenly along one of the narrow paths that cut between walls to a farm house. I'd ridden through his barn, and out the second story window onto a wall and away. Now I charged into the valley from the far side. Before I'd halved the distance the Dragon-Bloods knew I was coming.

In terms of strategy there isn't much to say. When taking on a half dozen supernatural beings alone you hit them hard and fast, killing the horses out from under the riders and then chopping those riders apart with abandon. My estimates put the conflict at less than thirty seconds to my death or victory.

That did not prepare me for the party to rein in and display their hands, coming to a full stop. Their leader, the tracker, called me to hold as all six of them paused. Their great jade lances went up, pointing to the sky. Confused, I reined in as well. Wimp took offense at being checked when he wanted to run, and reared, dancing about on his hind legs while he whinnied his protests at me.

"Are you the one known as Inevitable, the invader of Haid's home?" the tracker called. We were perhaps thirty feet distant. They stood in a loose pack, and their superbly trained warhorses stood still save when they ground their hooves into the dirt with anticipation. Wimp, excited and full of energy, danced forward and sideways, rarely pausing.

"That is close to my name," I replied. "And I did not invade the manse of Gens Haid. He invited me in warmly."

"Yet your escape was full of violence?" the tracker replied. "You injured six men, and assaulted the master of the house and his nephews?"

"That happened," I admitted.

"Was it glorious?" the tracker asked, his eyes shining.

"What? Who are you?" I barked.

"Yushoto Tein, a member of the imperial guard. These are my cousins, and combined we are the White Brotherhood," he replied, waving a hand to indicate the five with him. I considered them suspiciously and waited. "You may have heard of us." He looked young, but Dragon-Blooded age can be deceiving. They can look young well into their third century. Yet there was a youthful enthusiasm behind his eyes, lightly alloyed with immature arrogance, the affirmed the impression of youth. Like the pentarch of riders at his back, he wore a white breastplate with attached bracers and shoulder guards. Below the waist he had a skirt of reinforced lamelar plates that left his legs free to manipulate the warhorse. He also wore greaves and cavalry boots. His helmet was small, white as the clouds, with stiff hairs protruding from the brow that looked like a halo. He had removed it when we first started talking, and now it rested on the pommel of his saddle.

Tein had shockingly green hair. It was greener than emeralds, brighter than sunlight off oak leaves, and thicker than fields of young wheat. His eyes were the same shade but had an inner intensity that dominated his face. Clean shaven with a slightly hooked nose, he had angular features unlined by cares yet. There was a bit missing from his right ear, just above the lobe.

"I haven't," I denied hearing of his fame.

"Not to worry; you have now," he replied easily.

"What do you want?"

"Now that is an excellent question. What can you offer?"

"Death by the sword or crochet."

Yushoto Tein ignored my jibe. He continued as if I hadn't spoken, "You are Anathema, are you not? The one who invoked Solar magic on the border of the Mourning Field? It is the shadowland to the south of Lookshy."

I couldn't figure out where he was going with this. "The same," I affirmed.

"Could you do it again?"

"Do what? Invoke sorcery?"

"Yes. On that spot, the Mourning Field."

"I could certainly invoke it on that spot," I replied cagily.

"What about the Mourning Field?" he asked, eagerly.

"You mean, can I burn it from the world completely?" I guessed at the direction of his questions.

"Yes. Can you?" His eyes burned with their own internal enthusiasm. Either he was a master actor or truly considered the prospect with great eagerness.

"Maybe," I concluded. The Light of Solar Cleansing certainly wouldn't work, but there was something else very similar to it. "But not quickly. All the forces that inhabit that shadowland would come to protect it while I summoned my efforts."

"Suppose you had an army to protect you?"

"Suppose they turned on me as soon as I was done, killing me in my moment of weakness," I countered.

"Suppose we're here to bargain in good faith," he counter-countered.

"We're doing a lot of supposing."

"Not the least of which is the supposition that you can do what you claim," he pointed out.

"If I can, what exactly are you offering?" I asked.

"What do you want?"

"Ants, to begin with," I said seriously. "Certain ants. Track them, find them, exterminate them."

"Easily done," he replied. He didn't even consider the oddity of the request.

"That's a down payment, not a final price," I added. "I want that to show me you bargain in good faith."

"Then let us continue our theorizing. Suppose that we kill these ants for whatever reason you desire. Furthermore, let us suppose you can remove this blighted shadowland and we help you, taking no advantage of you, and causing you no harm. Would you willingly do this thing that would benefit all the world?" he asked.

I frowned, trying to figure out what his advantage was. That the shadowland was indeed a menace to all the world I agreed with completely. Honestly, eliminating it would meld quickly and easily with my own desires. But I had no idea why this Dragon-Blood would negotiate with me, something akin to consorting with ye old powers of evil, to achieve it. I explicitly refused to believe it was out of altruism.

"What's in it for you?" I asked.

"We are the Princes of the Earth. We steward the whole world, and our rule of Creation is founded on tending to it."

The harder I peered into his words, the more I began to suspect he was at least partially telling the truth. There was a certain idealistic spin on his words that was selfless. Yet there was more.

"A laudable sentiment. What else?"

Yoshoto laughed good naturedly, not in the least insulted by my suspicions of his motivations. "May we suppose something else?"

"Enjoy yourself."

"Then suppose this shadowland, the Mourning Field, used to belong to my family, and now is a worthless trinket of land. The fields were fertile, and crops burst from the earth as if compelled from below. Its forests used to provide lumber we used in our warships, for building, and for export, and was integral in our family fortune. Then the armies of the Realm met us there and made war at the very gates to the city. Now the fields grow monsters, and the woods are a pestilence. Yet it is still the property of Gense Yoshoto, though it brings us no jade and costs us deeply. Every time a dark creature comes out our family must use vital resources to crush it. Obligations of duty and law require Gens Yushoto to protect the world from this thing.

"Yet a few days ago a white light lit the beach. Even in the middle of day we could see it. The beached pirate vessel with it's dead crew was burned away, and the taint burned from the trees. I come to an interesting possibility. If the entire Mourning Field burns away, then we will no longer drain our strength against it. If it can be restored, then the lumber from it will return, and Yushoto's wealth will flourish.

"It is not a bad choice to make."

"Yet I'm Anathema," I said.

"You are of dubious morality. The shadowland is not."

We considered each other on the road under the early afternoon sun.

"How can I trust you?" I asked.

"You may have our oaths," he replied.

"And I will bind you to them," I replied. "Be aware that even if you intent to swear falsely, I can ensure dire consequences come upon you."

"Solar Anathema, do not question my word," replied the Dragon-Blood. His words were calm, but underneath them suddenly arose a great intensity. "I've said nothing but the truth, and spoken to you fairly when I could have attempted to lure you into a trap. Yet should you question my honor, then you and I will have poignant words that I doubt you will recover from." For the first time he spoke with real menace. The suggestion of dishonesty had struck him deeply.

This was why I couldn't imagine why I was intended to be a diplomat. I tried to explain my distrust without insulting him further. "Yushoto, with no offense intended, I am hard pressed to accept you at your word. Perhaps it is my ignorance of you, and if so I am doing you a grave disservice, but my welcome in the city of Lookshy has not been gracious. I was welcomed into the domain of Gens Haid and then ambushed for a crime I did not commit without being given a chance to speak in my defense. You have seen some proof of what I can do, but what proof do I have of your good intentions?"

"Let us make a simple deal. I will provide you the advance you asked for, tracking these ants, and in exchange you will give us your trust when we negotiate in good faith to remove the Mourning Field."

That was, I admitted silently, a very good deal. "That is very reasonable."

"Excellent."

He rode out from his comrades towards me. I guided Wimp to him. At the same time my left hand dropped to my side. I did not summon Agate to hand, but I could feel it's closeness in that other place. Cautiously I trotted to meet him, and we shook hands in the road. No part of this deal required me to trust him yet, though, and I used my will to bind the oath as I had the common criminals before. Instinctive understanding of what I had done hit him like it had them as well, and he glared at me. It had been a tacit statement of distrust.

"You owe me for that," he said calmly.

"Consider it a cost of doing business," I replied. "Add it to my tab when we negotiate purging the Mourning Field from the world."

"Very well. Now tell me of these ants," he instructed. At once it seemed the slight had been forgotten, but that was only a facade.

"There is a demon that has been plaguing me," I explained. "I have already killed two of its kind in the environs of your city. This one appears as a swarm of southern ants, each about the size of a finger from tip to the second knuckle. I have almost destroyed the swarm, but it escaped."

"Where did you see it last?"

I produced the bottle. Shaking it I put a bit of essence within it and then tossed it to him. Curious he snagged it out of the air, and stared in. The sunlight glinted off the glass and reflected into his face. As he stared at the myriad reflections within, rainbows traced across his features. He stared for a long time, and then returned it to me.

"Come. We will lead. You can follow so no one rides at your back." he said. Without another word he urged his warhorse forward, and his White Brotherhood fell in behind him. For the first I noticed that more than half his 'brotherhood' was female. The five fell in around him, and they moved quickly. My paranoia had the unfortunate consequence that I rode in their dust for several miles. That was not unintentional. I had insulted Yoshota Tein and this was his reminder of that.

Still his injured pride meant less to me than survival. If he expected people to trust him explicitly on their first meeting, he had unpleasant surprises in his future. We rode in silence, making a near straight line to the west until he turned onto a wide wagon path. It was deeply furrowed from farm carts, forcing us into riding in single file. Continuously I flicked my glance to the right and left, seeking signs of an ambush.

Suddenly the line paused. Having been paying attention to our flanks and rear I did no at once understand why, though Wimp slowed of his own accord to stop behind the woman we followed. Leaning, I saw Tein had dismounted and was on his hands and knees, staring at featureless mud. From there he crawled off the edge of the road and into a field.

"Come," urged the white sister who rode before me. The second rider had taken Tein's reins and we followed him off the road into a cow field. Once within we circumnavigated the pasture. The imperial guard tracker never remounted his horse, and went usually on hands and knees, inspecting the ground. I could not imagine he would be able to find ant tracks in dirt. He didn't.

"They did not exit above ground," he concluded finally. With that he remounted and asked for the bottle. I renewed the charm within, and he inspected it carefully. Finally in disgust he handed it back to me. "There is nothing here. They are most likely underground, burrowing away."

Telitia said when she was a child she had seen a swarm nest within a rhino. I considered the cows of the pasture carefully. There were four of them, three together and chewing while a third stood apart, seemingly asleep. Neglecting the Dragon-Blooded brotherhood I approached the cow and increased my hearing. There was no bovine heartbeat.

"Yoshoto Tein, you are indeed a great tracker. Please, watch my horse. I think this will be done soon."

He looked at me askance, but without prompting another of his party took Wimp's reins. I was but ten feet from the great still animal when I pulled Agate to me. I felt better with it in my hand. The Terrestrial's spread out, watching me carefully. Tein asked me, "Your foe is a cow?" as if he could not believe his own words.

I crept a little closer, observing the vast side of the animal. I remembered well how easily they had gone through my leather shoes, and wondered if the hide would slow them down. For all I knew it was quite possible they had spawned more, completely replenishing their number, and now lurked beneath the hide, waiting to explode outward by fell magics and engulf me. I needed some connection to banish the horde, but I could not see, hear, or feel them, and the bottle had showed Tein only blackness. That meant I needed to open the cow.

Once I was within arm's reach I stopped. Agate had a slim pommel like a child's fist. I moved slowly, approaching the bovine from the side, but behind the massive head. Its eyes would not naturally see me. Then resting the very tip of the blade on it shoulder, I listened carefully. For a long time I remained perfectly still, until the noise of the three remaining cows chewing was a sea of noise I dove beneath. Underneath that, underneath the rasp of wind in the grass, and the snorting of six of Lookshy's elite cavalry horses was nothing. No blood moved in the cow's veins, but neither did any insects.

_Of course not,_ I thought silently. _They don't hunt by swarming. They're burrowers._

The ground collapsed inwards and twelve hundred pounds of beef dropped on top of me as the carefully executed pit trap worked perfectly. Even as I plunged into the pit, the walls fell in with the hundred squirming bodies of the swarm, as the immense leaden weight of the cow, which had done so well as bait, tumbled down atop me.

I spun as it fell, took the impact with my back, and was crushed to the ground. The swarm dropped as well, pulling an avalanche of dirt after it. For a moment I held my weight and the cow, while my arms buckled and my fingers worked like mad. The hive scurried around the leather hide and came to my skin, seeking it with their envenomed jaws. From the surface, we must have simply appeared to disappear.

Then a burning white light blazed up from the center of the pit as I unleashed the plasma of an angry god. It ripped through the ground like an earthquake, sending aloft half the pasture as dust burned into cinders. The air was full of the smell of burned dirt. The crater was empty.

Then I crashed into the ground, and the burned hunk of beef plummeted after. What goes straight up from the center of a blast comes straight down. I hit on my back staring half a ton of burned cow as it fell directly at my face and decided my choice of spells had been ill considered. I was also deaf as a post. Agate came to my hand and I swung with desperate strength, and the beast dropped onto either side of me.

"Do you live?" yelled Yoshoto Tein as he rushed to the edge of the crater, ignoring the falling ash and dust. His head appeared as an outline against the sky. Not having heard a word, I stared at him with a dumb look on my face.

"Solar?" he yelled again. The spots started fading from my eyes, and I saw his lips moving. I groaned and sat up.

By the look of it he was yelling something else. I slapped my ear with the heel of a hand a few times then shrugged at him. He got the message and scrambled into the crater. With him came three of his sisters, all staring around confused.

Once it had been established that there would be no conversing, I took a moment to get my bearings. Not that I lost track of where I was, but being at the epicenter of a detonation has a way of disrupting one's sense of location and time. Tein was watching me for signs of a concussion while I did so. He said something else, and the edges of his words started coming through. After that my hearing returned quickly, and soon we could talk.

"Fire-based anti-demon magic," I explained. "Very quick, not very subtle."

"A banishment?" he asked.

"Sure," I replied. "Banishing gets rid of demons and so does that, so yes."

"And cows too?" asked one of the women.

"Eh?" I asked. We both walked over to where she and her comrades were staring at the bisected cow. Instead of leaking innards all over the ground, the cut was shimmering like misty glass, much as the entrance to the spirit of the plaza's sanctum had. That could mean only one thing. "Oh, bloody hell," I muttered.

"What?" asked the woman.

"It's an entrance to a sanctum. Now either this cow is an infernal gateway to Malfeas," I admitted, since it was indeed theoretically possible. Sort of. Vaguely. If I squinted at logic until nothing was in focus. "Or the swarm never fled Lookshy because it was worried, it went looking for a large animal. These things must burrow into the center of them and make a hive, and this swarm coincidentally also used it as bait. Where ever this thing makes its hive it connects to the demon's own twisted den."

"I have no idea what you just said," admitted Tein without a trace of self consciousness.

"Stay here. This may take a while," I replied, and spoke a word that opens all doors. It was the same as had opened the way to Yu Shan. Now it took me to a much more vile place, but I went through quickly. If it had guardians, they would not be dealt with by words.


	13. Chapter 13

On the other side were guardians. Blood apes stood on either side of the doorway, vile, sanguine creatures like perpetually bleeding gorillas with protrusions of bone across their back and heads. They're big, evil, and mean, but not particularly watchful or quick. I hacked one into three pieces that smoldered with infernal fire before the other knew what was happening, and then dodged its rush.

We were a vast bog, full of rotting wood and pools of mire. The trees pressed closely around, leaning ominously in toward the center clearing where a vast black mound rose nearly twenty feet from the muck. It was made of dirt and the stomach secretions of insects, a black mass that resembled mucus encrusted filth. The whole thing radiated heat and a peculiar malignancy that bespoke an incredible desire to consume without end. It was huge and could harbor many breeding queens.

This was, without a doubt, a job for fire. Lots of fire indeed was requisite. The blood ape had recovered and rushed back at me, but I was ready for it. Agate caught it on one arm and did not stop till the monster fell into disgusting halves. Those began to dissolve as I tied the essence of the guardian beast to my blade and got to summoning.

Similarly to my disdain of necromancy is my disdain of summoning demons. Sure, they're useful, but it never pans out well. A lot of mage's swear the best way to get rid of hostile demons is summon servile ones. That never made much sense to me because the best case ending scenario still involves having demons around. Unfortunately, forsaking learning of their summoning prevents me from using the more elegant banishments, leaving me with a variety of spells I use for the same purpose but are in fact mostly purely destructive. There isn't a huge difference between a banished demon and one smitten into magma and ash. They both come back easy enough unless hit with a spirit eating technique. That's easy against blood apes or similar lesser creatures, but would do me little against the thousand massed vilenesses of that hive.

Thus I summon elementals. As you may have guessed, I'm partial to fire elementals, preferably large, angry ones. It takes four hours to do the proper way, with bonds forcing the thing to obey my will, but I didn't have that kind of time. Instead I sent a message as politely as I could to one which was known to me. She, or it, arrived promptly, for my instructions tend to lie very close to its natural desires.

"Solar," the thing replied. It was vast, casting tendrils of flame a dozen feet above me, and radiating heat like a blast furnace. While initially it seemed to merely be constrained fire, within was a ill defined shape like a woman. There was something like the curve of a leg in the white licks of fire, which wrapped around themselves like gauze over full breasts. The origins of the blaze originate inches above the ground, flickering up from small foci like dancer's feet that are ever moving. Even the voice that is nigh unrecognizable from the roar of an unchecked wildfire seems to be ever so slightly effeminate. It is completely possible I just imagined it all in a delusion, but if so it is a persistent delusion.

"Nakara, thank you for coming," I said with a bow. Its possible the personification of the blaze sprung from its name. That has always struck me as a woman's name, though not in any language I know.

"You usually are such an entertaining man," she replied. "What is it you want?"

"Burn that mound and everything in side to ash and let nothing survive."

"A request near my own heart. But not free. What do you offer?"

"The immolation of many demons."

"What demons?" she asked, intrigued.

"In the mound. They are small but come in great numbers."

"A very sweet chore indeed, but the sweetness of the task does not render it free."

"A tithe of essence and power?" I offered. This was the problem with skipping the ritual. What could you possibly offer a being of pure fire?

"Ah, now we get closer. But not quite what I desire."

"Then what do you desire?"

"Kiss me like you would a woman. I will spare you from my heat."

I stared at the primordial flame. That didn't make sense. Yet she, and that request had permanently locked Nakara in my mind as a she, wanted something I could provide, and Nakara could always be trusted to burn.

"Agreed," I concluded.

"Will you stay and watch, then?"

"If you do not mind."

"I do not. Be sure my end of our bargain is complete," she commanded me. With that I waved her to begin and stepped back.

My spells to unleash flame are sudden and violent, and can destroy much in moments. But the directed efforts of an elemental match those sudden blasts and sustain them. Nakara lunged like a dancer to pirouette around the mound. With each step her footprints smoldered and burst into flame that grew to the brightness of flares. Soon I had to look away. By the time she had circled the mound once her tracks were an incandescent band of white the burned the swarmp's humid air arid. With it came a tremendous rush of wind as she took great breaths. Sparks raged into the sky, meeting the edges of the small sanctum's sky. The dome of heaven turned red as it caught the blaze. Even the magic that comprised this place began to fray, leaking pure power that she greedily sucked into her conflagration.

Yet the fire didn't bother me. The brightness did, but even as the ground water boiled away I felt only comfortably warm. For a while the demon swarm must have hidden in its nest and trusted it's excretions to protect it. That worked for a while. Yet Nakara danced round and round the mound, and then over it in expanding circles, until the entire thing glowed with the same radiance as furious sun. The outer shell sundered and the air inside exploded outwards into the expanding vortex of her blaze. With it came the bugs, vile creatures of all sizes and descriptions, though most loathsome were the vast, bloated queens with distended abdomens swollen with screaming young. They tumbled upwards into the heart of Nakara's blaze, and burned so brightly that she ate the essence of their spirits and left neither trace nor ash. Then she reduced the whole of the sanctum to a white powder. The swamp vanished into the fire, and there was nothing left.

"You treated me in good faith, Solar," she said, when the inferno had consumed everything that this endlessly consuming hive could offer. "So I will do so to you. These four things resisted my flames. Though I could crack their enchantments, I think that you would prefer to do so yourself."

She extended her blazing hands and offered me four crystals. They were small, palm sized, and bore the mark of Lemora. When she dropped them they were nearly white hot but felt comfortable in my hands.

"Thank you," I replied seriously. "This means much to me."

"Then you hold my part of the bargain paid?"

"In full," I assured her.

Without another word Nakara leaned in very close to me. My clothing fluttered in her omnipresent wind, as her fires reached out for air. Then, throwing caution to the burning wind, I reached out and took her like I had a certain southern woman. The elemental's flesh burned like passion. I lost myself for a while.

"Thank you, Solar. I have long been curious about that," she told me once she'd drawn away. I nodded, too unsure of words to speak. With no other mention she twirled on herself and vanished like an extinguished candle. I stepped through the portal and returned to Tein, and his white brothers.

They came to me with questions, but I forestalled them with a hand. Reverentially I put the crystals on the ground before counterspelling the bonds on them one by one. As each crackled and turned to ash, a wind escaped. I felt gratitude from the air. Then the crystals were gone too. I turned to the Dragon-Bloods.

"It is done," I said seriously. "Tein, I hold your agreement fulfilled. I will not doubt your word of honor again."

"Good," he said calmly. "We have watched your mount and spoken to the field's owner. Ultimately it proved simplest to acquire from him the land and the four head of cattle you deprived him of."

"Four?" I asked, curiously.

Tein gazed at me blandly, and then flicked his gaze over the vast crater we still stood at the middle of.

"Oh. Right."

"Now, will you speak of purging the shadowland?" he asked, returning to business.

"Easily. My terms are simple. The process will leave me vulnerable for the duration of the casting, which should not exceed a few hours. During that time you must protect me from all hazards, be they overt or circumspect. Shambling dead, skeletons, or assassins will surely appear to stop me, for I must cast the spell from the shadowland's very center. If you can provide for my security to my satisfaction, I will do this thing. In return, I ask for silver, as much as I can carry in both hands, freedom from prosecution in Lookshy, and guarantees that no one I have associated with in that city will come to harm from knowing me. You must also promise to pay due respect to the Unconquered Sun on his day so long as you live, and say a quick prayer to Rush the Falling Water afterwards for the same duration."

"I have no authority to free you or those you know from all persecution," he said seriously.

"Your best effort is acceptable."

"Then I have but one final condition."

"Being?"

"When this is done, you will apologize to me for doubting my integrity."

That piqued my pride a bit. Still, I squished that down, reminding myself it would be well to remember humility. "I accept."

"Then we have a deal," he agreed.

We shook hands seriously, and I did nothing to bind him to his word.

There was a feeling of completion as our first bargain fell away from the both of us. Now there was nothing to insure he kept his word but him.

We mounted up and rode down to the street. Along the way they formed up around me at some silent command. We returned to Lookshy with very little talking, nothing beyond bits of direction and observations the white brothers made to each other. Of this they did a fair bit.

The six riders were lead by Yushoto Tein, but he did not appear to have any formal authority. The others deferred to him when he spoke but did not ask his permission to act. Now Tein and a woman rode in front while two more women rode on either side of me. One of the two riders behind me was the other man. They were all wearing the same white reinforced plate with visored helms. It didn't look painted. The metal itself must have been an unusual alloy.

As we went they would call out to each other culverts and ambush spots. A party of local police elicited a warning between the brotherhood while they were half a mile distant. I've known old veterans who work in complete silence, but these seemed to have developed another way. Information passed between the six like a single nervous system exchanging the data of its senses. It seemed likely they were all in the imperial guard, due to the similarities of their arms, equipment, and horses, and just as likely they had worked together for a while. I didn't think they were related by blood. None resembled each other save by action.

Along the way I sent a silent message to Rush the Falling Water. His divine ability to hear prayers directed to him allowed for easy communication, albeit one sided. Without giving off an indicator, I prayed that he would take Salation and Telitia back to their house, and encouraged him to protect them as best he was able. His duties as a minor bean god should not be too oppressive. Besides, autumn was growing towards winter, and the season might very well be over.

When we crossed back over the soaring bridges over the Yanaze the toll keeper let us pass without a word. At the center of the river the bridge leaped in a great hump that allowed the river barges to pass, and even the high masted galleons that plied the oceans could traverse with care. Then we rode down and past the lesser city. Now a few of the soldiers who patrolled looked twice at me. They must have recognized me. A few cheered my 'capture.' The White Brotherhood never reacted.


End file.
